Push Email and "Message Mode Filtering"

My colleague in product usability blogging, Jasper van Kuijk, makes an excellent observation on his blog regarding how push email has disrupted "message mode filtering." The gist of it is that the medium you choose for a message indicates its urgency: email is the least urgent, text messaging more urgent, and a phone call the most urgent. Of course this system isn't spelled out anywhere - it's just something we've (mostly) come to naturally, societally adopt in a connected and wireless world. But push email, like that available on Blackberries, allows (or forces) users to treat email with the urgency previously reserved only for phone calls. It's a breakdown of the system that was so carefully (not) constructred by everyone! His whole explanation is worth a read - check it out on his blog, Uselog.com.