I was having coffee with a colleague I go back a long way with, and he told me of his first encounter with email. He had just joined Intel (in Israel) in 1988, and his boss showed him his new cubicle, his desk, and his computer, on which he demonstrated the email application. My friend came from a workplace where there was no such thing, and the following conversation ensued, more or less:

My friend: What is this for?

His boss: well, if you want to write something to someone, you write it in this window, add the person’s name on this line, and hit Send!

Friend: Oh, will I be supposed to communicate with people in the USA in performing my job?

Boss: Well, not necessarily. You can use it to communicate with people right here in our plant.

Friend: But they’re all here in this same office space, why on earth would I be sending them this email when I can talk to them?

Today, when coworkers send each other email from one cubicle to the next, this exchange would be unthinkable, yet my friend’s instinctive response is so sensible. It made me think: now it takes a serious effort to deploy a “No Email Day” program to get people to talk to each other again, but maybe back then the email addiction could have been stopped?

Ah, the innocence of youth…