Has Email “Productivized” Smart People Into Being Stupider?

On his website, Donald Knuth offers the following explanation for his refusal to use email: “Email 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.” The idea that the life of a professor should be radically different than other professions, and that universities should take far-reaching steps to allow faculty members to be “on the bottom of things” is easy to dismiss as eccentric utopia