Hear No Evil, See No Evil — E-mail Kills the Phone

coondoggie writes to tell us that in a recent study e-mail has overtaken telephony as the most common workplace communication tool. "Research reveals that 100% of the end-users surveyed use e-mail, followed by fixed-line telephones (80%), mobile telephones (76%) and instant messaging (66%). The study points out the three most ubiquitous technologies increase productivity the most. Over 70% of the end-users surveyed say e-mail impacts positively on their productivity, followed by conventional fixed-line telephony (53%) and mobile telephony (52%). From a productivity point-of-view, the research shows that instant messaging, blogs and softphones are considered most disruptive, and could negatively impact productivity if not managed properly."

Comments

Triumvirate Communicae

[skoaldipper]

Email for instruction. Telephone for clarification. Remote VNC when the other two fail.

Not a verifiable record

[Rix]

Unless both parties are signing their messages, either side can edit them to their hearts content, and there's no way to prove who (if either) is being honest. Even if they are signing them, they can simply ignore your message and claim it was never sent.

Re:Not a verifiable record

[tftp]

In most cases email is difficult to bury. Aside from mandatory logging which any large company has to have, there are always backups. Besides, if there are multiple recipients of the email then it's very hard to convince the court that all of those unrelated and disinterested parties conspired to fake an email complete with reasonable headers etc. And if you keep mail logs then these headers can be checked against the log, and if there was a message sent then it's practically proven - unless it's a criminal case where requirements for conviction may be tougher.

Re:Ugh, email

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, don't use Outlook?