Imagine Life without Email: Paul Jones, Sept. 25

noemail
Thirty years ago, Paul Jones began advocating for people to use email. Now he’s on a quest to convince us to get rid of it.

Date: Wednesday, September 25
Time: 10:00 a.m. – noon (talk begins at 10:30)
Location: Perkins Library, Room 217 (Click for map)
Contact: Leila Ledbetter, leila.ledbetter@duke.edu, or  Hollie White, hollie.white@law.duke.edu
Registration Encouraged but not Required: Register online

There are things better than email. Paul Jones, who left email behind over two years ago, will explain. Nearly thirty years ago, Jones began working on and encouraging people to use the unified messaging systems that led up to what we now know as email. That was then, and this is now. Email has become a zombie that doesn’t realize it’s dead and falling apart, a vampire that sucks your life’s blood away slowly each night before bed and each morning as you wake. You’ve probably noticed this yourself. In an attempt to atone for his part for inflicting email on UNC, he has been exploring alternatives to email with a shotgun and a wooden stake (and Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) as his tools. This talk will touch on the sad beginnings of email, offer some atonement for Jones’ part in the mess, but mostly will discuss trends and alternatives needed to achieve the Logic and Destiny of #noemail.

Sponsored by the Professional Affairs Committee of the Duke University Librarians Assembly.

Refreshments provided. This event is free and open to the public.

 

Photo by Dan Sears
Paul Jones. Photo by Dan Sears

About Paul Jones: Paul Jones is Clinical Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Clinical Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Jones blogs about research on, opinions of, and work for better communications strategies and services at ibiblio.org, where he also serves at Director. He has published poetry in cookbooks, in travel anthologies, in a collection about passion (What Matters?), in a collection about love (…and love…), and in The Best American Erotic Poems (from Scribner). He has a personal copy of the world’s oldest Web page.

2 thoughts on “Imagine Life without Email: Paul Jones, Sept. 25”

  1. For people who don’t actually make things for their job, email is the only visible, tangible thing they make all day. Dysfunctional, insecure, cultures confuse the meta-work of email and PowerPoint decks for the actual work of helping customers. In these environments, people feel obligated to send much email and create larger and larger documents to give the perception they’re working hard. It’s a downward spiral of anti-productivity.Email is a weapon used for pre-emptive political strikes by the sender, attacking everyone on the to list or distribution list. We hate email because we feel like email victims, at the mercy of self-interested people who do not share our goals.

    Algor
    http://net-informations.com

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