In 2014, when the Time journalist Harry McCracken tried to send a message to [Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail], he got an away message: Buchheit was on email hiatus. When McCracken finally got hold of him, Buchheit was unsparing in his critique of what Gmail had facilitated. “There’s a 24/7 culture, where people expect a response. It doesn’t matter that it’s Saturday at 2 a.m.—people think you’re responding to email,” he said. “People have become slaves to email. It’s not a technical problem. It can’t be solved with a computer algorithm. It’s more of a social problem.“