There are scores of messages in my inbox to which I have every intention of replying and yet that continue, rather glumly, to sit there. Until recently, this would have struck me as bad form: allowing days, and occasionally weeks, to go by before engaging with non-urgent requests. Recently, however, I’ve noticed a new etiquette: what feels to me like a free pass to put emails on ice until you break the seal and begin the exchange.
I raise this because it seems to me as if we’re in another transitional moment, a correction to the first two decades of email enslavement and a move towards a slightly more manageable protocol. Where once a same-day reply seemed not just ideal but mandatory, now a slow response indicates freedom of mind and a robust push back against the tyranny of one’s inbox. Perhaps I’m deluded, but all the hand-wringing over whether technology takes away from our ability to be human is countered by the fact that it brings more awareness to the parts that are left.
Or at least, that is the story we can tell ourselves. The best thing about the new rules of engagement, if that’s what they are, is the overwhelming sense of self-righteousness they confer. It’s not that I can’t be bothered to reply or am trying to avoid you; it’s that I have liberated myself from the yoke of technology. My lassitude, rather than a sign of organisational failure, is in fact an ideological victory.
There are limits to how far one can take this. In the case of email, I’ve noticed, the crucial thing is not to initiate a too-speedy response, since the speed of reply sets the pace of discussion. Once an exchange is under way, you’re committed and it feels very rude to go dark for a few days if a quicker rate has already been established. And, of course, a too fanatical non-engagement with technology puts you in danger of becoming the person who inconveniences everyone else so you can lovingly curate your self-image.
There are practical downsides too. I recently found myself in Los Angeles, in a 300-year-old taxi cab driven by a man of equal vintage, who slammed to a halt to check his satnav on a busy two-lane highway. I sat in the back, considering the possibility I was about to orphan my children because I got on my high horse about Uber. (On the way home, I tried to re-download Uber but it wanted Touch ID, which I couldn’t get to work, and for several moments I stood there dithering in a car park like someone teleported in from the 80s.)
As technology extends its reach, so we find new ways to avoid it. These days, I make sure all my WhatsApp messages come up as notifications on my phone, so I can read them without activating the app, alerting the sender to the fact I have seen them. And so on and so on. I’m not out having a life with the tiny bit of time these strategies free up, but the dream is that I may occasionally look up from my phone.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist.
