Slacklash

It’d be a good thing for Slack if it had such a pivot up its slee­ve, becau­se for an effi­ci­en­cy enhance­ment tool, it is pret­ty aim­less. The company’s slo­gan is “Be less busy,” but “Appear more busy” or “Simu­la­te busyn­ess” might be clo­ser to the mark. As John Herr­man put it, the app encou­ra­ges “a novel form of work-like non-work,” in which peo­p­le can enact “a full per­for­mance of work … wit­hout the accom­plish­ment of any­thing exter­nal.” It is a time-suck­ing, logic-squas­hing feed­back loop. Con­ti­nue.