Without notifications, which I, of course, do not use, email is the least intrusive and least disrupting way someone can contact me. I simply check my email when I feel like it, which is about two times daily, morning and sometime late evening.

Then, even when I look at my email, I don't have to respond. I don't have to do anything. And if there's an email I want to reply to, I won't necessarily do so right now. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.

The best part is the record of all communications and the fact that you have a searchable archive. Man, I wish I could search all my other conversations with people. In fact, I think I should just start recording everything, every day, all the time, and convert the audio to text.

About a decade or perhaps 15 years ago in Birmingham UK, the Ikon gallery had a multi-artist exhibition of a conceptual nature. one of the artists had used a micro-cassette recorder to record every word he uttered over a week and then had the tapes transcribed by audio-typists. The results where exhibited as an impressively high stack of A4 sheets. Unfortunately, they were, apart from a few sample sheets on the wall, piled in a glass case thus preventing viewers from sampling the text. I was taking bets on the sheets that were hidden from view being blank. The artist also exhibited the micro-cassette recorder and tapes used.

Google has nothing to say about the exhibit, but it has to be said my memory is a bit short on key words.

A sibling post mentioned Ted Nelson.

For one to one or one to many types of communication, I agree. Email, in my opinion, breaks down when there's a discussion amongst multiple people. For instance, you have to make sure that everyone in the discussion addresses are added by your MUA before clicking the reply button (or using the equivalent keyboard command). The other problem is that if you need to include a new person in an existing discussion, they won't have any of the previous messages to refer to (other than what happens to be quoted in the email they receive).

Newsgroups, on the other hand, address the issues I mentioned and are just as good as email in communication IMO.

Never mind that "text messaging" in say Japan has been email based since virtually forever, since the SMS standard had issues with Japanese script.

and thus your thesis of 'HN doesn't like to be reminded' falls to the simpler explanation of 'trashtalk usually gets downvoted'.

I prefer to see it as the down votes reaffirming that I am correct.