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

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.