At a meeting in San Francisco, Donald Knuth, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University and something of a legend in the field of computer programming, was questioned by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, a former student of Knuth's, and Jennifer Chayes, a professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Washington, who also heads a research group at Microsoft, says the Mercury News. Knuth gave up e-mail in 1990. He said: "E-mail 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. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.''
I was amused to find that Brin has adopted the same e-mail strategy as me. "He only reads and responds to the most recent messages in his inbox, ignoring older messages as soon as he gets distracted by more pressing business.'This way you can trick some small number of people into thinking you're prompt,' Brin said." Knuth would undoutedly recognise this as a LIFO stack, which is the phrase I always use. ("Why haven't you answered the e-mail I sent last week?" "Sorry, I operate a LIFO stack.") But I don't recommend it if you feel guilty about have 2,284 (and rising) unanswered e-mails in your in-box....
