E-mail new cause of stress - three possible cures for your mail headaches

Original story

Finnish Market Digest 3.12.2000. E-mail now in excess of one hundred times postal service volume

E-mail new cause of stress

Experts report that the volume of electronic mail, currently a hundred times that of traditional “snail mail”, is producing stress symptoms in users.

In recent years the volume of e-mail has grown exponentially, and it surpassed conventional mail deliveries in the course of 1997-98. Currently the roughly 2 million Finnish Internet users send an average of five e-mail messages each day, and each message has an average of three recipients.

In addition, computers send a tenfold number of either unsolicited or solicited messages to users daily. The great majority of these mailings are limited to and targeted on specific population-groups. To some degree they resemble customised newspapers and periodicals, with moving pictures and sound.

An average of thirty or more daily incoming messages has been shown to cause considerable problems for the receivers. Many have expressed a sense of stress and of bad conscience that time does not allow even for the scanning of such a volume of material, let alone to send replies.

Focus: Three Pink Pills for Mail Stress

If reading and responding to e-mail takes too much of your time, help may be around the corner in the form of a program that takes care of some of the handling routines, and which can even be taught to respond to messages. We took a closer look at three such software packages already on the market.

The programs were tested by a panel of 122 users. All had been selected from discussion groups treating people suffering from Internet-related ailments. All were of the opinion, based on their own experiences, that the volume of e-mail is a problem and that it should be limited in some way. The test panellists also had many ideas of their own for solving the current flood of electronic messages.

Cyberpunk, the autoreplier released by Cyberpunk Inc., has adopted an approach that shifts the problem from the receiver to the sender. It sends an automatic reply-to answer on all messages received from persons with whom the user has not previously been in correspondence, and at the same time it registers the messages as read. In the autoreply, the original sender of the message is requested to collect from the recipient’s homepage the required code to ensure that mail bypasses the autoreplier software in future. This first line of defence weeds out mass mailings and other trivial messages.

Helsinki Telephone PLC has also developed its own system to ease e-mail congestion and handling, under the banner of the 118 Mail Service. It scans the incoming message for names of persons and searches several address databases to create automated lists for telephoning or e-mailing or browsing web-pages, and thereafter contact can be made through icons on the screen. If there are several people with the same name as that found, the 118 Mail Service contacts the Internet Personal indexes. On the strength of the information contained here and the content of the original message, the service searches out the most probable alternative.

Friends and Penpals from FormatC Industries, on the other hand, makes use of writing styles and the user’s previous mail history. It sorts incoming mail into user-selected categories, such as work, news, entertainment, romance, etc. The software can also be requested to parse messages carefully to determine those which clearly require a response. There is a registry of models for form-answers to messages. The program chooses the most suitable alternative, and if set to run in auto-answer mode, can also reply by itself. Obviously the software in this instance requires a high level of syntax recognition, and it should be noted that as yet it is only available in English-language versions (US and UK).

The two programs above are rather different in their approach. Both have areas in which they can save the user from considerable mental wear and tear. Friends and Penpals is as yet really only a useful service for mail in English, but in that sphere it forms an excellent add-on tool.

118 Mail Service facilitates the finding of contact information, homepages, and so on for individuals referred to in addresses, subject-lines, or in the body of messages. It will only save users time if they would otherwise be searching manually for this information. But there is also a down side to this; when personal links appear onscreen automatically, it becomes easy to explore them rather more closely, and this naturally can be a very time-consuming exercise in itself. Users have expressed a wish that the system be extended to include the names of companies and other organizations.

Cyberpunk was found to be of the greatest use by our test panel, since it screens out all “unrecognized” messages at source. But the value or otherwise of this program depends greatly on the user. Some felt that the software’s “jackboot-up-the-rear” response is rather crude and unfair, if the sender is a private individual approaching the user with sincere intentions. In cases like this, a message - perhaps from a long-lost friend - that might have been welcomed will be brusquely “bounced” back and the sender will not try a second time. Many were also sceptical of the future outlook, saying that if Cyberpunk becomes widespread, junk mail software will be programmed to access the by-pass codes from web sites, thereby rendering the cyber guard-dog toothless.

Hannula I. & Linturi R. 1998: 100 Phenomena. Yritysmikrot Oy, Helsinki 1998. Copyright notices ISBN 952-9508-18-2

Toteuma-arvio 2026

Toteuma lyhyesti

• Ilmiön toteuma: 5/5
• Toteuma viiden vuoden tarkkuudella: kyllä; arviointi-ikkuna on 1995–2005
• Toteuma väljemmällä aikahorisontilla: kyllä, erittäin laajasti
• Ilmiön ydin: digitaalisen viestinnän määrän kasvu synnyttää uudenlaista kuormitusta, ja sen hallintaan tarvitaan teknisiä, organisatorisia ja käyttäytymiseen liittyviä ratkaisuja.

Tarinan ennakoima ilmiö ei ole vain sähköpostin yleistyminen, vaan viestintäkanavien muuttuminen työn keskeiseksi kuormitustekijäksi. Tältä osin ennuste osui poikkeuksellisen hyvin. 2000-luvun alussa sähköposti oli jo monissa organisaatioissa arkipäivää, mutta myöhemmin kuormitus laajeni pikaviestimiin, projektityökaluihin, sosiaaliseen mediaan, videokokouksiin ja mobiili-ilmoituksiin. Ongelmaksi ei muodostunut yksittäinen kanava vaan jatkuvan tavoitettavuuden kulttuuri.

Viiden vuoden tarkkuudella ilmiö toteutui hyvin. Sähköposti muuttui 2000-luvun alkuvuosina toimistotyön perusinfrastruktuuriksi, ja samalla syntyivät roskapostisuodattimet, automaattiset kansiot, hakutoiminnot, poissaoloviestit ja erilaiset työajanhallinnan käytännöt. Myöhemmin ongelma kasvoi paljon sähköpostia suuremmaksi. Älypuhelimet toivat työviestit taskuun ja tekivät viestinnästä ajasta ja paikasta riippumatonta. Tämä vahvisti tarinan ydintä: viestintävälineiden tehokkuus voi kääntyä käyttäjän kuormitukseksi, jos järjestelmät eivät auta priorisoimaan ja rajaamaan huomiota.

Toteutuneet ratkaisut ovat olleet sekä teknisiä että sosiaalisia. Teknisiä vastauksia ovat esimerkiksi spämmintorjunta, prioriteettipostilaatikot, ilmoitusasetukset, kalenteriperusteinen tavoitettavuus, tekoälypohjaiset tiivistelmät ja automaattiset vastausluonnokset. Organisatorisia vastauksia ovat olleet sähköpostietiketit, kokouskäytäntöjen uudistaminen, hiljaiset tunnit, oikeus irrottautua työstä sekä yritysten sisäiset viestintäohjeet. Ilmiö toteutui siis vielä laajempana kuin tarina ehti kuvata.

Tarinan konkreettiset parannuskeinot eivät välttämättä toteutuneet juuri ehdotetussa muodossa, mutta tämä ei heikennä ennusteen osuvuutta. Keskeinen havainto oli, että digitaalisen viestinnän kasvu vaatii suodattamista, priorisointia ja uusia tapoja suojata käyttäjän huomiota. Vuoteen 2026 mennessä tämä on yksi tietotyön keskeisistä kysymyksistä.

Johtopäätös: ilmiö toteutui erittäin vahvasti. Ennuste oli jopa varovainen, koska myöhempi kehitys teki viestintäkuormasta sähköpostia laajemman jatkuvan digitaalisen läsnäolon ongelman.