Dan Tynan, of IT World longed for the early 90s, when emails were few, their meaning was great and it was possible to read and reply to each one of them.

But is that still possible today?

Dan decided to find out by applying that level of dedication to his present-day over-flowing inbox:

At this moment in time my Gmail inbox has 34,235 messages, 22,342 of them unread. I've lost track of how many email addresses that are forwarding to that account (at least 6 -- no, wait, make that 8). That doesn't include emails addressed to my various pseudonyms, which I track separately, or all the spam that's caught by Google's excellent filters.

At any moment I expect FEMA to declare my inbox a disaster zone and send in the National Guard. So I've decided to do something about it. For one week, at least, I vow to:

1. Only check my email at three specified periods per day, to minimize email-induced procrastination.

2. Read every message in my inbox and scan all the spam for false positives.

3. Deal with each message -- either by replying, filing, deleting, or unsubscribing.

It seems eminently doable. I feel good about this. I think I can lick the email monster.

I am, of course, totally, utterly wrong.