> it comes from an era before zomg smartphone notifications now now now and as such has respectful communications properties built-in. Gmail on iOS certainly w

> it comes from an era before zomg smartphone notifications now now now and as such has respectful communications properties built-in. Gmail on iOS certainly will try to notify you for “important” messages. If anything, I think the failure of email in combatting spam is the only thing saving us from the notification-heavy defaults you mentioned. > instead you're instructing robots to steal your dad's attention at some predetermined time in the future while you do something else... do you see the dystopic themes here? Not that different from setting a reminder to send the text yourself…and you’d presumably pick a scheduled send time when you’re also available to reply. But I do agree, it’s marginally more impersonal.