12 ms·

Knuth versus Email (1999)

164 points by joshuacc 11y ago

jrcii 11y ago
I was reminded of RMS's autoreply: I am not on vacation, but I am at the end of a long time delay. I am located somewhere on Earth, but as far as responding to email is concerned, I appear to be well outside the solar system. After your message arrives at gnu.org, I will collect it in my next batch of incoming mail, some time within the following 24 hours. I will spend much of the following day reading that batch of mail and will come across your message at some point. If I write a response immediately, it will go out in the next outgoing batch--typically around 24 hours after I collected your message, but occasionally sooner or later than that. Please expect a minimum delay of between 24 and 48 hours in receiving a response to your mail to me. If your message is hard to understand or responding takes real work, the response could take longer. So please wait 48 hours after sending a message before you resend it, remind me about it, or ask if I have received it. If it has been less than 48 hours, the absence of a response from me only means you have not given me time to answer. If you are having a conversation with me, please keep in mind that each message you receive from me is a response to the mail you sent 24 to 48 hours earlier, and when writing it, I probably had not yet downloaded your later mail. If you are in big hurry to speak with me, and one day's delay would be a serious problem, you can ask my FSF assistant to phone me. Send mail to <rms-assist@fsf.org> saying what you would like to talk with me about, and giving your telephone number. You can also call the Free Software Foundation office at 617-542-5942 (weekday Boston business hours) and ask them to phone me on your behalf. If it's really important, try both! An intermediate measure is to email me your phone number and ask me to phone you. But if there isn't enough hurry to warrant phoning me, please don't bother the FSF people. The mail you already sent me will reach me before any mail they could send me now on your behalf. I will respond as soon as I can. To contact the Free Software Foundation, use one of the addresses in https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/email https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/email. If you do not wish to receive this message ever again, please send a message to rms-autoreply-control@gnu.org with the subject "OFF". Otherwise, you might receive a reply like this one up to once a month.
- hengheng 11y ago
  So he's self-centered enough that he expects everybody to read through all of this essay. Interesting.
  - Etheryte 11y ago
    No, he's reasonable enough to explain why and how long it takes to respond to the massive amount of mail he must receive daily.
    - sdegutis 11y ago
      Early in my professional career, I learned something: nobody in the professional world wants to hear what anyone else has to say, unless money is involved (e.g. one of you is the other one's client or customer), and even then they want to hear as little as possible. I had to learn how to professionally communicate with my employers and clients, which means learning to say as little as humanly possible while still mostly getting the point across.
      - lolidaisuki 11y ago
        Except people email RMS specifically because they want to hear what he wants to say. Professional field and the hacker and activist cultures are very different in nature.
      - chucksmash 11y ago
        So you optimize for communicating with that sort of person if you need money from them. Never having met the guy, that doesn't really sound like rms' MO.
    - adrianN 11y ago
      He also has rather complex rules about inviting him for a talk https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/#!msg/mysociety-community/zkyZpOXjgoQ/_8xyXSxv9zYJ https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/#!msg/mysoci... To people who think like rms, these rules are very helpful, but I think many people will get the impression that he is being very rude by having a long document with his preferences.
wund 11y ago
I don't feel good about this. My guess is that his secretary still uses emails even if he's not. So basically he has just transfered his communication tasks to another person and somehow it is ok for him to enslave a person for jobs he doesn't want to do since he's a much more "important" human being. This is pure arrogance. I think I will start to question what I learned from this guy. Maybe I give up on latex, not that there is a better alternative.
- OoTheNigerian 11y ago
  How do you feel about people who transfer their "cooking tasks" to the people they pay to cook for them?
  - wund 11y ago
    Same
    - leereeves 11y ago
      And the people who buy food at a supermarket instead of hunting/growing it, or buy clothes instead of sewing, ... We all employ others to do things for us, some people just do so with fewer middlepeople.
      - wund 11y ago
        It doesn't need to be black and white, and in that regard I don't think secretaries are essential.
        wtbob 11y ago
        > in that regard I don't think secretaries are essential. Ah, now we've gotten to the very nut of it: you don't think that secretaries are essential. Never mind that the sort of folks who employ them seem to think that they are: you, who aren't in their position, don't, and that's enough. I'm reminded of pg's famous essay on the Blub Paradox. Programmers who use a semi-powerful language can see that others are less powerful than theirs, but can't see that more powerful languages offer anything much. Likewise, folks at one level of society can easily see that it makes sense to hire others to grow their food and make their clothes, but can't see that it makes sense for others at other levels to hire people to manage their schedules and correspondence. A good secretary is a lever for a decision-maker.
gaur 11y ago
If you don't use email, then you don't get to have an opinion on how it's spelled.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Same goes for crack and meth?
  - gaur 11y ago
    Yeah, it would be super weird if a professor had a paragraph on their website about how crack and meth should be spelled.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      But even more weird if a crack/meth addict had a website with essays about linguistics...
      - morgante 11y ago
        Don't underestimate meth addicts.
- dave2000 11y ago
  That statement would have been more useful if it had been followed by something which at least attempted to justify it.
acjohnson55 11y ago
So I'm guessing he's not on Slack?
- Aloha 11y ago
  I know this is just a glib quip - and we ought not be encouraging such things, but it made me laugh.
- dave2000 11y ago
  Hard to tell; Slack doesn't let you know who's online, what they've read etc.
  - srcreigh 11y ago
    Slack lets you know who's online.
    - dave2000 11y ago
      You're right - I had to dig around to find it (on the Android app). It's nowhere near as clear as it is in Facebook Messenger. (And of course there's no `read to here`).
iquant 11y ago
The existing comments are already largely meaningless, so I'll add another meta comment: Is the use of "versus" in the headline correct in English? There isn't anything adversarial going on here, it is just his email policy. In other places "versus" even seems to be used as a synonym of "and".
- gaur 11y ago
  > There isn't anything adversarial going on here On the contrary, this passage sounds quite hostile: > If I run across such a message that was misaddressed --- I mean, if the message asks a question instead of reporting an error --- I try not to get angry. I used to just throw all such sheets in the wastebasket. But now I save them for scratch paper, so that I can print test material for The Art of Computer Programming on the blank sides.
known 11y ago
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
- guftagu 11y ago
  Wow! That looks like my new favorite quote
brudgers 11y ago
Previous HN discussion of Knuth's email containing anecdotes of people's experience interacting with him: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2537624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2537624
s4chin 11y ago
"Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things." Wow!
- greenyoda 11y ago
  I think that many of us have jobs in which we have to be both "on top of things" and "on the bottom of things" to varying degrees. For example, when I'm trying to write a tricky piece of code, it goes much better if I can shut out interruptions like Knuth does and concentrate on the task at hand. If people expected me to reply immediately to their non-urgent e-mails, it would be a lot harder to concentrate. Also, people who expect me to answer their e-mail or phone call immediately are making the presumption that whatever they have to ask me is more important than whatever I currently happen to be doing. In most cases, it's not.
Void_ 11y ago
Book "Deep Work" contains some great thoughts on this topic, talking about Knuth too. I made an app that shows you how often you check your email: http://focuslist.co/escape/ http://focuslist.co/escape/ (and other distracting websites)
- Walkman 11y ago
  So you made one more distracting website to check.
- coolandsmartrr 11y ago
  Looks neat. I tried to download from the MAS, but I use the incompatible 10.10, and I don't want to upgrade my OS. Is there a way to download it regardless?
chj 11y ago
Knuth does read emails and reply them, the only difference from the rest of us is that he may do it on print out of original emails, and usually in batch.
tomohawk 11y ago
I had an uncle who was a vice president at a fortune 50 company. The executives at the company were not allowed to have a computer at their desks. They all had secretaries who dealt with email, calendars, spreadsheets, etc. The point was that if they were sitting behind a computer doing time consuming clerical work required to interact with a computer, they were being distracted from much more important tasks. The company was more interested in having people at that level who could delegate and organize than to actually do the work themselves. The skills and kind of work that makes a person successful at one level often leads to lack of success at another.
- petejansson 11y ago
  While I agree with your premise about different types of work, and while I agree there's some level of clerical work required to interact with a computer, computers can do far more than clerical work, and can provide intellectual leverage when used properly. Banning a high-level executive from using something that gives them intellectual leverage holds the organization back.
  - MichaelBurge 11y ago
    You have to think, people - especially senior executives at fortune 50 companies - don't like being arbitrarily held back when they have a job to do. If they want to use a computer, I imagine that these ambitious people would fight the CEO tooth and nail to get access to one. Probably people on the board whom the CEO is politically motivated to please are also banned from using these computers. People tend not to ban things before they're widely used and cause some sort of problem. I imagine there was a time at his company where his executives used computers. People would have a memory of the time before the computer ban, and compare it every day to the time after the computer ban. These executives probably had stellar track records, had the motivation to do better, had the previous experience of using computers, had political sway, and still failed to convince the CEO. And yet, with nothing more than a brief description of the abstract idea, and a firm belief that computers are valuable, a Hacker News commenter has been able to diagnose that it's holding their company back. That's not to say that CEOs can't make bad decisions, but we don't even know what the company does or what they sell. Probably neither of us have worked there. It seems a little premature to rebel at his decision.
akkartik 11y ago
The form ``email'' has been well established in England for several years, so I am amazed to see Americans being overly conservative in this regard. (Of course, ``email'' has been a familiar word in France, Germany, and the Netherlands much longer than in England --- but for an entirely different reason.)" I sense there's a joke here. Did anyone get it?
- lobster_johnson 11y ago
  It's not a joke -- email (or émail in French) means enamel or glaze in those languages.
  - dghughes 11y ago
    Canada too at least the French parts but anywhere here you can buy spray cans of émail in English is enamel.
peter303 11y ago
Before everything was wired to the internet in the late 1980s, UNIX and bboard message apps were as popular as email. You were either there to get the message or it didnt matter. I see mobile message apps enjoy a resurgence in the past decade.
ubertaco 11y ago
There is something that feels disingenuous about taking a conscientious position against email, and then saying that you do actually use email, just by way of a "human spam filter" instead of an automated one. With that said, I certainly recognize the need for very-deep-focus jobs to be uncoupled from the "right-now" pace expectations of email. So I think Knuth is making a smart decision for the kind of work he does (and one that could be useful to other people in similar lines of work), but he's just presenting/explaining it poorly. It's sorta like the person who proclaims "I don't have internet access, and I'm better off for it", and then goes on to say that they have a personal assistant whose job is to handle all their online accounting/shopping/research/etc for them. Maybe they personally are better off for their particular workflow, but the really are using the internet, just by proxy, and their implied value statement about themselves compared to people who do use the internet (directly) is not really valid.
- pmelendez 11y ago
  He is very specific when he said that the only incoming email he welcome is about bugs and errors in TAOCP. Also he doesn't rant against email, just explained why is not for him and encourage people to use regular mail to communicate with him.
aae 11y ago
People chose to select their truths and ignore any which do not fall within the bounds of (what they believe to be) an acceptable life narrative. When someone makes a truth a person is not fond of apparent to them, they receive it as though it were an insult instead of an entirely accurate observation. If the truth hurts so much that a person takes offence, then they should take action to change so that the observation no longer holds true. If the truth is in regards to something they are incapable of changing, then it should not be a truth they can be held accountable to as it is not within their power to change it. Knuth's blunt honesty may seem rude to some, however the same result is reached if he provides that truth in (what is considered by most) a polite fashion, or (what is considered by most) a rude fashion. The only ultimate difference between the two is that the 'rude' version reaches its conclusion much faster, saving time and effort for any involved parties.
johan_larson 11y ago
He's old, and he's notable enough that people put up with his eccentricities.
- tamana 11y ago
  That statement works fine, perhaps even better, without "he's old".
dang 11y ago
Anybody know the year of this? It was posted in 2007 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81289) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997073 has 2003 in the title, but it's likely even older. The delightful Eco quote was from 1995.
- 0942v8653 11y ago
  Another date for you: there's an HTML comment in the <head>  It's possible that it's referring to the HTML skeleton, not the article itself.
  - dang 11y ago
    Bravo for finding a bit of actual textual evidence. Let's use 1999; it's at least an upper bound.
    - j_koreth 11y ago
      Actually I heard of him stopping to use email during the late 80's and such
      - dang 11y ago
        That's consistent with cpr's post. But the article was clearly written later.
- cpr 11y ago
  When I was around Stanford in the early 80's (second employee at Imagen, a laser printer spin-off from the TeX project), I'm pretty sure Knuth already handled his email via his secretary. Edit: Oh, right, see the summary elsewhere about his secretary Phyllis Winkler at her retirement.
f_ 11y ago
I've read this a long time ago and it seems to be still mostly true! A more recent statement of Knuth about email is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS8qwMna8_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS8qwMna8_o
overgard 11y ago
I don't really understand why people become so anti-email. I'm a deeply introverted person, so it's not like I don't understand wanting to be left alone, but if I don't want to be interrupted... I close my email viewer. The asynchronous nature of email makes it great for introverted people. I used to get a TON of email at one of my prior jobs, and, like, it was fine. Just wait till it's convenient to open it. If it's actually urgent they'll call or send an IM. I'm not accusing Knuth of this, but I think some people just use email as a way of humble-bragging. "I'm so important it's overwhelming!" Yeah wow. We're all so impressed.
- harryf 11y ago
  > I'm a deeply introverted person That there might be why you haven't learnt to hate Email (or other forms of asynchronous communication). If you want to learn to hate, try running a few mildly successful Open Source projects. Or try participating in other lame company flame email thread. The fundamental problem with email (and other forms of asynchronous electronic comms including Github pull requests and Facebook messages) is there's little burden on the sender. The entire burden is carried by the recipient. It's too easy for the sender to turn impulse into wasting someone else's time. Snail mail at least costs a stamp and a trip to the letter box. TLDR: Right now email doesn't scale
  - overgard 11y ago
    Synchronous communication costs just as little, and it's vastly more disruptive. I've done all the things you mention, I guess the fact that I can easily turn off email makes me not care. Sure someone can callously waste my time with an email.. And I can callously delete it. Plus, if I think an email is a waste of time, I can just not respond.
  - cortesoft 11y ago
    It really isn't that much of a burden to ignore an email.
  - baudehlo 11y ago
    Email has been scaling just fine for years. And I've run some reasonably successful open source projects (including SpamAssassin at the height of its success). I really don't see the problem. The fact that an email is easy to send without knowing the recipient is a huge benefit of email. No other electronic communication system offers this benefit (and unfortunately it enables spam, but that's an entirely different discussion).
cmarschner 11y ago
After catching dust for 15 years on my bookshelf, I sold the 3-volume edition of The Art of Computer Programming this week through a used book service. No regrets.
stretchwithme 11y ago
He was still on email. He just delegated the work to someone else. Sounds like a good arrangement for someone with his level of contribution. I'd rather he didn't spend his limited time reading his junk mail either.
GnarfGnarf 11y ago
Knuth has a point. Although I use email and couldn't work without it, I think we haven't yet realized email's insidious invasion of our world, and its pernicious change of our work habits. Suddenly the Inbox has become a tyrant dictating our daily schedule. Since when do others have priority over our time and attention, expecting immediate replies to their intrusions? Companies and organizations have not yet grasped the negative impact on productivity that email has wrought. Like drinking from lead goblets in another era, it's going to be a while before we get it. We need email, but it needs to be put in its place.

164 points by joshuacc 11y ago

jrcii 11y ago

I was reminded of RMS's autoreply: I am not on vacation, but I am at the end of a long time delay. I am located somewhere on Earth, but as far as responding to email is concerned, I appear to be well outside the solar system. After your message arrives at gnu.org, I will collect it in my next batch of incoming mail, some time within the following 24 hours. I will spend much of the following day reading that batch of mail and will come across your message at some point. If I write a response immediately, it will go out in the next outgoing batch--typically around 24 hours after I collected your message, but occasionally sooner or later than that. Please expect a minimum delay of between 24 and 48 hours in receiving a response to your mail to me. If your message is hard to understand or responding takes real work, the response could take longer. So please wait 48 hours after sending a message before you resend it, remind me about it, or ask if I have received it. If it has been less than 48 hours, the absence of a response from me only means you have not given me time to answer. If you are having a conversation with me, please keep in mind that each message you receive from me is a response to the mail you sent 24 to 48 hours earlier, and when writing it, I probably had not yet downloaded your later mail. If you are in big hurry to speak with me, and one day's delay would be a serious problem, you can ask my FSF assistant to phone me. Send mail to <rms-assist@fsf.org> saying what you would like to talk with me about, and giving your telephone number. You can also call the Free Software Foundation office at 617-542-5942 (weekday Boston business hours) and ask them to phone me on your behalf. If it's really important, try both! An intermediate measure is to email me your phone number and ask me to phone you. But if there isn't enough hurry to warrant phoning me, please don't bother the FSF people. The mail you already sent me will reach me before any mail they could send me now on your behalf. I will respond as soon as I can. To contact the Free Software Foundation, use one of the addresses in https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/email https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/email. If you do not wish to receive this message ever again, please send a message to rms-autoreply-control@gnu.org with the subject "OFF". Otherwise, you might receive a reply like this one up to once a month.

hengheng 11y ago
So he's self-centered enough that he expects everybody to read through all of this essay. Interesting.
- Etheryte 11y ago
  No, he's reasonable enough to explain why and how long it takes to respond to the massive amount of mail he must receive daily.
  - sdegutis 11y ago
    Early in my professional career, I learned something: nobody in the professional world wants to hear what anyone else has to say, unless money is involved (e.g. one of you is the other one's client or customer), and even then they want to hear as little as possible. I had to learn how to professionally communicate with my employers and clients, which means learning to say as little as humanly possible while still mostly getting the point across.
    - lolidaisuki 11y ago
      Except people email RMS specifically because they want to hear what he wants to say. Professional field and the hacker and activist cultures are very different in nature.
    - chucksmash 11y ago
      So you optimize for communicating with that sort of person if you need money from them. Never having met the guy, that doesn't really sound like rms' MO.
  - adrianN 11y ago
    He also has rather complex rules about inviting him for a talk https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/#!msg/mysociety-community/zkyZpOXjgoQ/_8xyXSxv9zYJ https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/#!msg/mysoci... To people who think like rms, these rules are very helpful, but I think many people will get the impression that he is being very rude by having a long document with his preferences.

wund 11y ago

I don't feel good about this. My guess is that his secretary still uses emails even if he's not. So basically he has just transfered his communication tasks to another person and somehow it is ok for him to enslave a person for jobs he doesn't want to do since he's a much more "important" human being. This is pure arrogance. I think I will start to question what I learned from this guy. Maybe I give up on latex, not that there is a better alternative.

OoTheNigerian 11y ago
How do you feel about people who transfer their "cooking tasks" to the people they pay to cook for them?
- wund 11y ago
  Same
  - leereeves 11y ago
    And the people who buy food at a supermarket instead of hunting/growing it, or buy clothes instead of sewing, ... We all employ others to do things for us, some people just do so with fewer middlepeople.
    - wund 11y ago
      It doesn't need to be black and white, and in that regard I don't think secretaries are essential.
      - wtbob 11y ago
        > in that regard I don't think secretaries are essential. Ah, now we've gotten to the very nut of it: you don't think that secretaries are essential. Never mind that the sort of folks who employ them seem to think that they are: you, who aren't in their position, don't, and that's enough. I'm reminded of pg's famous essay on the Blub Paradox. Programmers who use a semi-powerful language can see that others are less powerful than theirs, but can't see that more powerful languages offer anything much. Likewise, folks at one level of society can easily see that it makes sense to hire others to grow their food and make their clothes, but can't see that it makes sense for others at other levels to hire people to manage their schedules and correspondence. A good secretary is a lever for a decision-maker.

gaur 11y ago

If you don't use email, then you don't get to have an opinion on how it's spelled.

coldtea 11y ago
Same goes for crack and meth?
- gaur 11y ago
  Yeah, it would be super weird if a professor had a paragraph on their website about how crack and meth should be spelled.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    But even more weird if a crack/meth addict had a website with essays about linguistics...
    - morgante 11y ago
      Don't underestimate meth addicts.
dave2000 11y ago
That statement would have been more useful if it had been followed by something which at least attempted to justify it.

acjohnson55 11y ago

So I'm guessing he's not on Slack?

Aloha 11y ago
I know this is just a glib quip - and we ought not be encouraging such things, but it made me laugh.
dave2000 11y ago
Hard to tell; Slack doesn't let you know who's online, what they've read etc.
- srcreigh 11y ago
  Slack lets you know who's online.
  - dave2000 11y ago
    You're right - I had to dig around to find it (on the Android app). It's nowhere near as clear as it is in Facebook Messenger. (And of course there's no `read to here`).

iquant 11y ago

The existing comments are already largely meaningless, so I'll add another meta comment: Is the use of "versus" in the headline correct in English? There isn't anything adversarial going on here, it is just his email policy. In other places "versus" even seems to be used as a synonym of "and".

gaur 11y ago
> There isn't anything adversarial going on here On the contrary, this passage sounds quite hostile: > If I run across such a message that was misaddressed --- I mean, if the message asks a question instead of reporting an error --- I try not to get angry. I used to just throw all such sheets in the wastebasket. But now I save them for scratch paper, so that I can print test material for The Art of Computer Programming on the blank sides.

known 11y ago

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

guftagu 11y ago
Wow! That looks like my new favorite quote

brudgers 11y ago

Previous HN discussion of Knuth's email containing anecdotes of people's experience interacting with him: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2537624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2537624

s4chin 11y ago

"Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things." Wow!

greenyoda 11y ago
I think that many of us have jobs in which we have to be both "on top of things" and "on the bottom of things" to varying degrees. For example, when I'm trying to write a tricky piece of code, it goes much better if I can shut out interruptions like Knuth does and concentrate on the task at hand. If people expected me to reply immediately to their non-urgent e-mails, it would be a lot harder to concentrate. Also, people who expect me to answer their e-mail or phone call immediately are making the presumption that whatever they have to ask me is more important than whatever I currently happen to be doing. In most cases, it's not.

Void_ 11y ago

Book "Deep Work" contains some great thoughts on this topic, talking about Knuth too. I made an app that shows you how often you check your email: http://focuslist.co/escape/ http://focuslist.co/escape/ (and other distracting websites)

Walkman 11y ago
So you made one more distracting website to check.
coolandsmartrr 11y ago
Looks neat. I tried to download from the MAS, but I use the incompatible 10.10, and I don't want to upgrade my OS. Is there a way to download it regardless?

chj 11y ago

Knuth does read emails and reply them, the only difference from the rest of us is that he may do it on print out of original emails, and usually in batch.

tomohawk 11y ago

I had an uncle who was a vice president at a fortune 50 company. The executives at the company were not allowed to have a computer at their desks. They all had secretaries who dealt with email, calendars, spreadsheets, etc. The point was that if they were sitting behind a computer doing time consuming clerical work required to interact with a computer, they were being distracted from much more important tasks. The company was more interested in having people at that level who could delegate and organize than to actually do the work themselves. The skills and kind of work that makes a person successful at one level often leads to lack of success at another.

petejansson 11y ago
While I agree with your premise about different types of work, and while I agree there's some level of clerical work required to interact with a computer, computers can do far more than clerical work, and can provide intellectual leverage when used properly. Banning a high-level executive from using something that gives them intellectual leverage holds the organization back.
- MichaelBurge 11y ago
  You have to think, people - especially senior executives at fortune 50 companies - don't like being arbitrarily held back when they have a job to do. If they want to use a computer, I imagine that these ambitious people would fight the CEO tooth and nail to get access to one. Probably people on the board whom the CEO is politically motivated to please are also banned from using these computers. People tend not to ban things before they're widely used and cause some sort of problem. I imagine there was a time at his company where his executives used computers. People would have a memory of the time before the computer ban, and compare it every day to the time after the computer ban. These executives probably had stellar track records, had the motivation to do better, had the previous experience of using computers, had political sway, and still failed to convince the CEO. And yet, with nothing more than a brief description of the abstract idea, and a firm belief that computers are valuable, a Hacker News commenter has been able to diagnose that it's holding their company back. That's not to say that CEOs can't make bad decisions, but we don't even know what the company does or what they sell. Probably neither of us have worked there. It seems a little premature to rebel at his decision.

akkartik 11y ago

The form ``email'' has been well established in England for several years, so I am amazed to see Americans being overly conservative in this regard. (Of course, ``email'' has been a familiar word in France, Germany, and the Netherlands much longer than in England --- but for an entirely different reason.)" I sense there's a joke here. Did anyone get it?

lobster_johnson 11y ago
It's not a joke -- email (or émail in French) means enamel or glaze in those languages.
- dghughes 11y ago
  Canada too at least the French parts but anywhere here you can buy spray cans of émail in English is enamel.

peter303 11y ago

Before everything was wired to the internet in the late 1980s, UNIX and bboard message apps were as popular as email. You were either there to get the message or it didnt matter. I see mobile message apps enjoy a resurgence in the past decade.

ubertaco 11y ago

There is something that feels disingenuous about taking a conscientious position against email, and then saying that you do actually use email, just by way of a "human spam filter" instead of an automated one. With that said, I certainly recognize the need for very-deep-focus jobs to be uncoupled from the "right-now" pace expectations of email. So I think Knuth is making a smart decision for the kind of work he does (and one that could be useful to other people in similar lines of work), but he's just presenting/explaining it poorly. It's sorta like the person who proclaims "I don't have internet access, and I'm better off for it", and then goes on to say that they have a personal assistant whose job is to handle all their online accounting/shopping/research/etc for them. Maybe they personally are better off for their particular workflow, but the really are using the internet, just by proxy, and their implied value statement about themselves compared to people who do use the internet (directly) is not really valid.

pmelendez 11y ago
He is very specific when he said that the only incoming email he welcome is about bugs and errors in TAOCP. Also he doesn't rant against email, just explained why is not for him and encourage people to use regular mail to communicate with him.

aae 11y ago

People chose to select their truths and ignore any which do not fall within the bounds of (what they believe to be) an acceptable life narrative. When someone makes a truth a person is not fond of apparent to them, they receive it as though it were an insult instead of an entirely accurate observation. If the truth hurts so much that a person takes offence, then they should take action to change so that the observation no longer holds true. If the truth is in regards to something they are incapable of changing, then it should not be a truth they can be held accountable to as it is not within their power to change it. Knuth's blunt honesty may seem rude to some, however the same result is reached if he provides that truth in (what is considered by most) a polite fashion, or (what is considered by most) a rude fashion. The only ultimate difference between the two is that the 'rude' version reaches its conclusion much faster, saving time and effort for any involved parties.

johan_larson 11y ago

He's old, and he's notable enough that people put up with his eccentricities.

tamana 11y ago
That statement works fine, perhaps even better, without "he's old".

dang 11y ago

Anybody know the year of this? It was posted in 2007 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81289) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997073 has 2003 in the title, but it's likely even older. The delightful Eco quote was from 1995.

0942v8653 11y ago
Another date for you: there's an HTML comment in the <head>  It's possible that it's referring to the HTML skeleton, not the article itself.
- dang 11y ago
  Bravo for finding a bit of actual textual evidence. Let's use 1999; it's at least an upper bound.
  - j_koreth 11y ago
    Actually I heard of him stopping to use email during the late 80's and such
    - dang 11y ago
      That's consistent with cpr's post. But the article was clearly written later.
cpr 11y ago
When I was around Stanford in the early 80's (second employee at Imagen, a laser printer spin-off from the TeX project), I'm pretty sure Knuth already handled his email via his secretary. Edit: Oh, right, see the summary elsewhere about his secretary Phyllis Winkler at her retirement.

f_ 11y ago

I've read this a long time ago and it seems to be still mostly true! A more recent statement of Knuth about email is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS8qwMna8_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS8qwMna8_o

overgard 11y ago

I don't really understand why people become so anti-email. I'm a deeply introverted person, so it's not like I don't understand wanting to be left alone, but if I don't want to be interrupted... I close my email viewer. The asynchronous nature of email makes it great for introverted people. I used to get a TON of email at one of my prior jobs, and, like, it was fine. Just wait till it's convenient to open it. If it's actually urgent they'll call or send an IM. I'm not accusing Knuth of this, but I think some people just use email as a way of humble-bragging. "I'm so important it's overwhelming!" Yeah wow. We're all so impressed.

harryf 11y ago
> I'm a deeply introverted person That there might be why you haven't learnt to hate Email (or other forms of asynchronous communication). If you want to learn to hate, try running a few mildly successful Open Source projects. Or try participating in other lame company flame email thread. The fundamental problem with email (and other forms of asynchronous electronic comms including Github pull requests and Facebook messages) is there's little burden on the sender. The entire burden is carried by the recipient. It's too easy for the sender to turn impulse into wasting someone else's time. Snail mail at least costs a stamp and a trip to the letter box. TLDR: Right now email doesn't scale
- overgard 11y ago
  Synchronous communication costs just as little, and it's vastly more disruptive. I've done all the things you mention, I guess the fact that I can easily turn off email makes me not care. Sure someone can callously waste my time with an email.. And I can callously delete it. Plus, if I think an email is a waste of time, I can just not respond.
- cortesoft 11y ago
  It really isn't that much of a burden to ignore an email.
- baudehlo 11y ago
  Email has been scaling just fine for years. And I've run some reasonably successful open source projects (including SpamAssassin at the height of its success). I really don't see the problem. The fact that an email is easy to send without knowing the recipient is a huge benefit of email. No other electronic communication system offers this benefit (and unfortunately it enables spam, but that's an entirely different discussion).

cmarschner 11y ago

After catching dust for 15 years on my bookshelf, I sold the 3-volume edition of The Art of Computer Programming this week through a used book service. No regrets.

stretchwithme 11y ago

He was still on email. He just delegated the work to someone else. Sounds like a good arrangement for someone with his level of contribution. I'd rather he didn't spend his limited time reading his junk mail either.

GnarfGnarf 11y ago

Knuth has a point. Although I use email and couldn't work without it, I think we haven't yet realized email's insidious invasion of our world, and its pernicious change of our work habits. Suddenly the Inbox has become a tyrant dictating our daily schedule. Since when do others have priority over our time and attention, expecting immediate replies to their intrusions? Companies and organizations have not yet grasped the negative impact on productivity that email has wrought. Like drinking from lead goblets in another era, it's going to be a while before we get it. We need email, but it needs to be put in its place.