Abstract
A discussion on multitasking in an in situ environment would not be complete without including email. The popular press keeps ridiculing our obsession with email. A few years ago, a New York Times article drew an analogy between zombies and emails: the zombies keep coming even though you keep killing them, and emails keep coming even though you keep deleting them (Klosterman, 2010). The popular cartoon Oatmeal characterizes how the “email monster” plagues us (theoatmeal. com/comics/email_monster). Over the years, from interviews and anecdotal reports, our informants who have been observed while performing information work in situ claim the main reason for their self-interruptions is from checking email. In this chapter I will discuss how email is a significant contributor to multitasking in a digital media environment.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mark, G. (2015). Email. In: Multitasking in the Digital Age. Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02212-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02212-8_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-01084-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-02212-8
eBook Packages: Synthesis Collection of Technology (R0)eBColl Synthesis Collection 6