THROUGHOUT THE AGES Homo sapiens have developed many excellent ways to communicate. As to which ones are superior, it's difficult to say. All can be measured against certain criteria. A good communications system should be easy to use, clear, secure, scalable and accessible. It should bring people together, not divide them. It should exalt the human spirit, not degrade it.

The spoken word, of course, is hard to beat. Most people have easy access to it, and it can be pretty secure if you whisper. Conversely, you can use it to stir a crowd, as both Marc Antony and Vince Lombardi did with great success. It binds nations together. Take the French, please.

Over great distances, however, the spoken word fails. Which is why we have telephones. Of course, the telephone has its limitations. Once you eliminate expression and gesture, the error curve rises, which is why trying to break up over the phone is such bad form. Moreover, the telephone is not terribly scalable. Try setting up a conference call.

The list goes on: Semaphore flags are excellent aboard ship as long as the day is sunny and the captain sober. Carrier pigeons convey their messages over great distances with a high degree of security unless they encounter a hungry hawk or a crack marksman.

On one matter, however, we can agree: Nothing is as bad as e-mail.

The Way It Was

But e-mail, you protest, is the very lifeblood of business today. E-mail keeps us connected, informed, wired. How could we manage without it?

A better question is, How long can we afford to keep using it?

Let's try to remember how it was.

Before e-mail, we did not begin our days by plowing through spam: ads telling us how to make a fortune on the internet; memos asking us to contribute to uncertain charities; poems and puns and predictions about this or that dire new bug or virus. We spent those first precious minutes in the office connecting with our colleagues, not scanning wire stories about the decline in software sales in Bora-Bora.

Before e-mail, when someone received a promotion, we stood up and walked across the office to shake their hand. Long overdue, Sue. Way to go, Joe. Can I have your office now that you're moving upstairs, Claire? And Claire, Joe and Sue knew that, no matter how insincere, we had at least made an effort. Now we shoot the lucky sons of guns a congrats that jingles and mingles with all the others in their in-box until it gets sent to the trash can.

Before e-mail, when we had something to say about a business issue, we thought about it. We considered it. We mulled it over in what used to be our unmediated, unwired minds. We consulted other people and maybe we even jotted down a few thoughts on a piece of paper, looked at it, crossed out a beau mot and

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