Each year, when Microsoft gathers titans of industry for its CEO Summit, Bill Gates gives an overview of exciting trends in technology. This year, Gates presented the hot new thing at Microsoft and I was sorely disappointed.

If you go to YouTube, you can find a video of Gates working a thing called Touch Wall, a technology that converts a surface into a giant computer interface that senses your movement. Flip your hand, a document scoots to the side. Wave two hands apart and documents expand.

Cool, but the curmudgeon in me complained that the New New Thing at Microsoft fails to solve the biggest curse of the workplace. If you need a hint, let me ask: What sucks up time, causes stress and displaces the creative, give-and-take of conversation?

Reply all: It's e-mail.

Unwanted e-mail began in 1978 when a guy named Gary Thuerk sent an announcement of a new DEC computer product to 600 addresses. Today, we get messages from fictional Nigerian finance bank officials and offers for discounts on pills that make certain body parts perform better. Spam is now 100 billion messages a day.

Machines send spam, so those messages are safe to ignore or route automatically into the trash. But what about unnecessary, aggravating or just plain pointless e-mails from co-workers? There's a social obligation to read them and perhaps even respond. By one estimate, white-collar workers get as many as 140 messages a day. Figure at least 60 seconds to read each message. And several more minutes for those that require a response. It adds up.

And up. USA Today reports that each day, about 39.7 billion person-to-person emails, 17.1 billion automated alerts, and 40.5 billion pieces of spam are sent worldwide. Those big numbers came from the research firm IDC, but we don't need numbers to know how e-mail has swallowed our lives. David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, authors of Send: The Essential Guide to E-Mail for Home and Office, say office workers spend at least 25 percent of their day on e-mail. And that's not counting the person next to you at the ball game or movie checking his or her BlackBerry.

Gates knows the problem personally. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in 2004 revealed that Gates received more than 4 million e-mails a year, making Gates the most e-mailed person in the world. By then, Gates' e-mail address was widely known. Years earlier, as a business reporter at the Seattle Times, I had e-mailed him directly about a question. I figured there was slight chance of hearing back.

The next day, I got a call from a publicist, offering help. Had Bill himself seen my question? I was tantalized that the world's richest man had actually considered my words. Oh, no, she replied. We have bozo filters to catch those e-mails.

Bozo filter? Did that make me a ...? It took about a second to figure out what had happened. My message had been routed to the publicist. It hurt. But I understood. Who wouldn't want messages routed to a real person who did your screening?

At Microsoft, huge amounts of e-mail are common. It's part of the culture to boast that you can power through your messages and beg for more. The bigger the volume, the greater the status. But not all of us are fast or patient. Even some with the quickest minds can't keep up. Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig once declared "e-mail bankruptcy" when he realized that he had spent 80 hours in one week trying to catch up on a backlog of e-mail. Lessig, an internationally known expert on copyright law in the software industry, got 200 nonspam e-mails a day. He just reached a point of saturation. He copied all the e-mailers' addresses and sent them a note: "Dear person who sent me a yet-unanswered e-mail, I apologize, but I am declaring e-mail bankruptcy."