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Researcher: "Bursty" email responses link us to Darwin and Einstein
Merlin Mann | Oct 27 2005
New Scientist Breaking News - Email and letter writing share fundamental pattern New Scientist article suggests contemporary patterns for answering email may not differ much from the way people had previously dealt with paper correspondence—we tend to respond in "bursty" patterns that give high priority and fast turnaround to important stuff while allowing the less pressing stuff to languish for weeks. The basis for comparison? The letters of Einstein and Darwin:
I wonder if they also had to sift through 90% unsolicited ads for mens' patent medicines and daugerrotypes of Ladies Having Gone Wild. Here's the home page for Albert-László Barabási and his book, Linked: The New Science of Networks. [ Thanks, Mr. Kottke ] Update 2005-10-29 12:38:34
It's all pops and buzzes from here -- remember I got a C-minus in Geometry as a senior -- but the response does have lots of terms and formulas and appears to be written by someone smart. You guys are, of course, free to rassle over it. Thing is: even if this research were written in crayon on the back of the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge, it wouldn't alter my (increasingly overstated) opinion on a larger point; technology adopted and applied without proximate (and self-aware) behavioral changes gives us little more than a more efficient way to send our lives out of control. True for Darwin and true for me -- and probably will be as true for George Jetson as it was for Gork the Caveman. Just saying. [Thanks again for the heads-up, Fazal] 13 Comments
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 Sure, Merlin -- I didn't...Submitted by Josh Rothman (not verified) on October 27, 2005 - 11:22am.
Sure, Merlin -- I didn't mean t be snarky (well, maybe I did) -- but this is the kind of thing I was referring to: Biologists have noticed similar patterns when they plot the actions of birds foraging for food. Birds will make many short flights, but occasionally very long ones – the same pattern found in answering letters and emails. Barabási suggests that animals might use a common mechanism, selected by evolution, to decide among competing tasks. As far as I can tell from the article in TNS, no one has actually checked to see if birds prioritize tasks using the same mathematical formula. Rather, it's just suggested that, because birds too have tasks they must prioritize, and appear to prioritize them, we must all be following the same as-yet-undetermined-or-even-detected evolutionary law. This is just total speculation! When TNS writes, "The pattern could reflect some basic biological encoding that shows up in everything from humans at work to birds foraging for food," that is a pretty big "everything" and a pretty big "could." And it's worth noting, too, that what the finding shows is that there is a similar distribution of priority between email and letter-writing. While Darwin and Einstein were writing one letter a day, I'm writing dozens of emails a day. So there have been gains in efficiency. I don't have any emails that have been waiting inmy inbox for years, for example. I think you may be right that the psychological impact of work has actually become more severe with the introduction of these technologies--but certainly the total efficiency has increased, right? That's a minor point, though. The main thing is that the article is pretty hyperbolic, and, given that hyperbolic articles about evolutionary psychology are actually a pet peeve of mine, I was unable to resist the snark.... » POSTED IN:
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