Are you aware of the following downsides of using email for clerical tasks?

• Emails don’t have a due date, e.g. one has to express in words that one needs a flight ticket “until Friday”
• It’s easy to lose track of all the action items buried in the many emails. For some action items, people accept responsibility and work on them. Some get forgotten and fall between the cracks.
• It’s impossible to “revoke” an email once it’s sent. Sometimes one sends an additional “high priority” email just to cancel a previous email (hoping that the recipient will actually read the high priority email before the original email).
• It’s impossible to update an email. Haven’t you ever forgotten to add an attachment? Didn’t you ever want to change or add a few sentences after you’ve sent an email?
• There’s seldom feedback. Just to acknowledge that something is finished, the recipient of an email would have to send an email back to the original sender. But often those emails don’t get sent - even if they are expected.