Engineers at Intel have recently been experimenting with an intriguing new form of anti-technology – "no email Fridays."

After chief executive Paul Otellini spoke out about engineers "who sit two cubicles apart sending an email rather than [getting] up and talk," about 150 engineers began adhering to a policy that encourages them to avoid email as much as possible on Fridays.

The goal is to encourage personal interaction and help free workers from their email addiction for at least one day. The idea has also caught on at other businesses, according to a recent BBC online article.

"Firms such as US Cellular and Deloitte and Touche have been experimenting with e-mail for some time," it reports. "Last year, fulfillment firm PBD launched a no e-mail Friday, when chief executive Scott Dockter suspected that over-dependence on e-mail was damaging productivity."

That company then claimed the four-month experiment "had been a resounding success, with better teamwork, happier customers and quicker problem solving."

Many workers are drowning in email. Inboxes overflow and don’t get emptied, emails are left unreplied, and some people even go so far as to declare email bankruptcy. Managing email is one of the major daily tasks for so many of today’s workers.

The weakness of no email Fridays is that it could help internally, but emails from those outside of the company will continue to pour in on that day. So workers could end up spending the day on the phone, rather than dashing off quick responses -- the kind of thing email is great for. But sometimes people need to be reminded of the value of a personal response either via the phone or in-person. For teams, it could be helpful.

Still, not everyone is convinced. Charles Bermant, a technology columnist for the Seattle Times, isn’t a fan.

"So here's what will happen: Companies will encourage email-free periods for employees to converse," he wrote in a recent column. "They will walk over to a neighboring cubicle to ask ‘when will the presentation be ready?’ and the conversation will evolve into ‘how about those Seahawks?’ Pretty soon productivity will decrease, and a year later the policy gets revised — again."

For him, it evokes the idea of casual Fridays. "Casual Fridays had its own desired result, making everyone more comfortable," he wrote. "Email free Fridays presumably have the same purpose but takes the long way around to a place we could reach if we just thought about what we are doing."

That’s the thing about email –- people are very careless with it. They hit "reply-all" when they shouldn’t, send inappropriate messages, and spam friends and colleagues with useless forwards. The list of gripes goes on.

I won’t come out against no email Fridays, but Bermant is correct in pointing out that a lot could be gained by teaching people the correct way to mange and use email. That alone could do more to help cut down on message clutter and email-induced stress.