The world after email is on its way

It’s clear from the habits of our undergraduates that young people have moved on from email, or have never adopted it in the first place. Teenagers think that email is middle aged and, of course, they cannot conceive of a world without email, instant messaging (IM) or mobile phones at all.

Now the hi-tech services company Atos has announced that it is phasing out email over the next 18 months. Email will go the way of the smoke signal, letter, telex and fax. According to The Independent, Atos will be moving to other tools, including IM, wikis and social networking, including a business-based social networking service called Yammer. The idea is partly to reduce the time spent on useless emails – spam, marketing emails, emails copied to everyone just to cover backs, etc. It is a disruptive, intrusive, demanding medium. Most us aren’t much better at ignoring incoming mail than we at ignoring a ringing phone.