A friend in a US Hi-tech company once commented to me that all this business communication that is manifesting itself as email overload is nothing new: we also had this in the days before email, even if it used paper instead of computer screens. We called it Correspondence, he said. And then he added: We devoted a couple of hours a week to it; the rest of the time, we worked…

The difference, of course, is that then, it took two hours a week, where today – the data shows – it takes ten times as much. That’s the problem. Pre-electronic work mail came in interoffice envelopes and via ordinary snail mail. It had to be written, read and answered, just like email. So why did it take so much less time?

Some obvious reasons:

• Paper mail isn’t free. It needs to be stamped (if external) and it costs to move it around. Email is practically free, as far as the sender is concerned.
• Paper mail was harder to generate. You had to write it on paper, then typically have an admin type it on a typewriter, proof it, wait for corrections, and so on.
• Paper mail was hard to send to large distributions. You could have the typist generate a few carbon copies using carbon paper (CC!), but they became less legible the more you wanted; above 3-4 you had to photocopy them, and each had to be addressed separately in an envelope of its own.
• There was a general expectation that you would do all this only when it was necessary.

To illustrate, consider the analog of forwarding a joke to 50 coworkers. Today, this takes a couple of clicks. In the 1970’s you would need to photocopy 50 copies of the joke, stuff them in 50 envelopes, write addresses on them all, and carry the pile to the mail room (where a few eyebrows would be raised, you can be sure). You can bet nobody would do that, not even if it were the best joke in the world – for the best reason there is, the selfish aversion to make great efforts with no worthwhile return.

The innocent days of yesteryear…