As research like Alex Pentland’s emphasizes, however, this prioritization of abstract written communication over in-person communication disregarded the immensely complex and finely tuned social circuits that our species evolved to optimize our ability to work cooperatively. By embracing email, we inadvertently crippled the systems that make us so good at working together. “Memos and emails simply don’t work the same way that face-to-face communications work,” Pentland bluntly concludes.
