Okay, see, this I just don’t get. Email may be disastrously broken, overloaded, clumsy, and overdue for a major architectural overhaul (tag org in Gmail and Xobni are the only ones that come to mind and they are minor), but this grab-bag of technologies just doesn’t serve as a functional substitute.

Why? Two simple reasons: asynchronicity and determinacy. No other medium or collection of media within the Web meta-medium has BOTH those 2 features. The former is self-explanatory, but the latter is critical. Email is 1:1 in terms of its core use-case, with cc, bcc, announce-lists, permission lists and spam being concentric circles. The 1:1 nature with no uncertainty about whether it has been read. Cultural norms have evolved where email is the only medium that is expected to receive guaranteed attention within its core use case. You look like you are not on top of stuff if your responsiveness profile on email is bad. If I don’t get a response to an email there is no uncertainty about why — either the person at the other end cannot handle his/her information flows, or s/he is deliberately choosing to ignore me. Both are signals, and in either case, I know what to do next. In 2.0 media, there is always an asymmetry — a response to a blog comment is proof of engagement, but non-response is not proof of non-engagement.

The entire 2.0 technology set largely adds value through stochastic and opportunistic social behaviors. While this set is huge, there is a core of necessary, deterministic social behavior that email supports, that cannot be “2.0ed” away. Call this mission-criticality. Email supports mission-criticality in a way nothing else does.

Whatever replaces email may be more efficient, but if it doesn’t retain the 2 features, it will fail to displace it.

” IM instead — IM lets you get an immediate response, and you can migrate to voice, and send files too, when necessary.”

Immediate response, except if I have a JOB to do – in the big web2.0 frenzy we tend to forgot that people have jobs to do -, in which case I will just ignore it.
Probably close it later and you never get an answer as opposed to the e-mail which I will open and read and answer when I have time.

The whole thing with the e-mail is that you don’t interrupt people, which you probably do when you just walk to their desk, ring their phone or blink – or even nudge – their screen.

E-mail is definitely not dead – at least I hope -, what should be done is learn how to use it.
Like, not for attachments, FYIs and so on.

And I know that IMs are not “immediate responses”. They are questions shout in the wilderness, sometimes, someday, somehow to be answered. Probably 2 hours later when the recipient got back from lunch, meeting, provided he does not just switch off his machine. Then the message is lost.