Tech Firm Outlaws Email

Soon, employees of the biggest IT company in Europe won't be able to do the most common of tech tasks: send or receive email. Atos CEO Thierry Breton thinks email is a tremendous waste of time, and he's in the process of having it eliminated in the workplace, reports Ars Technica (which isn't convinced the move will solve anything). Instead, employees will have to communicate via IMs, texts, maybe even the spoken word.

Breton sees the shift as being on a grand scale, notes ABC: “We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives,” he says. "We are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.” (More email stories.)