What slack is to me is a disruption of the traditional methods of communication which often comes with a disruption of ideas of sacredness and profanity.
There's always room for better tools but what I think Slack allows is leaving behind asynchronous email (which often devolves into real time chat) and instead embracing a stream of real time information.
One thing it very much leaves behind though is contextual information since that can often be interspaced with lots of garbage information. (Fun) perhaps a smart bot that can quickly summarize a weeks worth of info for you.
Regardless of slacks actual efficacy amongst people with varying expectations to work communication I think it draws attention to a need to improve our tools for communication for new work methodologies.
There's always room for better tools but what I think Slack allows is leaving behind asynchronous email (which often devolves into real time chat) and instead embracing a stream of real time information.
One thing it very much leaves behind though is contextual information since that can often be interspaced with lots of garbage information. (Fun) perhaps a smart bot that can quickly summarize a weeks worth of info for you.
Regardless of slacks actual efficacy amongst people with varying expectations to work communication I think it draws attention to a need to improve our tools for communication for new work methodologies.