New technology, work and early death

According to an article by Robert McKie in The Observer yesterday: Health experts agree - emails are fattening , health experts believe millions of hours of vital exercise are being lost every week thanks to the explosion in electronic messaging. Dr Dorian Dugmore, a health adviser to Sport England (who commissioned the report) is quoted as saying the following on the matter:

'We're losing millions of hours of exercise through the explosion of email...People email colleagues who sit next to them, never mind those who work on the other side of the office. We have to change people's lazy attitudes.'

The main conclusion is that increasing activity levels by 10 per cent could save 6,000 lives and £500 million per year, as well as leading to one million fewer obese people in England. Apparantly, many employers in the UK are growing hostile to the use of email per se, although it does not seem clear whether the antagonism is based along the lines of employee welfare or business needs alone.