While some like Observer (UK) writer John Naughton are LOLing over Mark Zuckerberg’s observation that email is dead,” others, like Atos SA (Europe’s Largest IT Company) CEO Theirry Breton are kicking email out of their companies.
Breton’s pronouncements got ink (err electrons too) in Wall Street Journal and The Telegraph (UK) yesterday before getting the hyperactive Slashdot treatment. today. Among the firebombs tossed by Breton were:
“The email is no longer the appropriate (communication) tool. The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face (in the future). It is time to think differently.”
“Companies must prepare for the new wave of usage and behaviour”
Obvious statements to folks reading this blog or who have since shutoff email themselves.
Not that everyone agrees. Dudley Dawson at examiner.com composed a long whine about Breton including a critic of his English (or of the translator’s version of Breton. I await to read with some anticipated glee Dawson’s French postings.) Dawson raises many points, misfiring on each and misinterpreting all while missing the main point — collaboration and social are less served by email.
But with Atos and IBM both pushing for #noemail workplaces, Naughton’s claim that “[T]he main reason young people don’t use email is that they haven’t yet joined the world of work” becomes more empty and obviously reactionary and tired. Work at great companies isn’t about getting stuck in unproductive technologies but about pressing forward to a more efficient and productive future — without email.
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