All Intensive Purposes

The Financial Times' Mary Branscombe talks to Microsoft sociologist Marc Smith about how people use e-mail:

He calls current software socially inept: "It simple has no conception of human relationships." His team is working on ways of making software "socially savvy" so that it can take more of the load. . . .

"We found that 50 per cent of user minutes are focused at the top of the inbox. That's a sacred space, that's like my living room. You have to be invited into my living room and you should have to be invited into my inbox."

He wants to reclaim that space for the most relevant unread messages: in the real world, he says, "some people matter more than others" and software should take that into account.

"If you come to my home and knock on my door, I have a dog, my dog will bark. If you come back frequently, eventually the dog notices that you are a friend of the family. It does not bark, it wags its tail. Why is it that Outlook and other e-mail clients cannot be as smart as my dog?"

Mary Branscombe, "Inbox out of control? You're not alone," Financial Times Special Report: Digital Business 6 (April 12, 2006). The rest of the Special Report is quite good, too, including this piece by Kate Mackenzie about over-use of e-mail and efforts to find solutions.