This generation doesn’t make phone calls, because everyone is in constant, lightweight contact in so many other ways: texting, chatting, and social-network messaging. And we don’t just have more options than we used to. We have better ones: These new forms of communication have exposed the fact that the voice call is badly designed. It deserves to die.
Consider: If I suddenly decide I want to dial you up, I have no way of knowing whether you’re busy, and you have no idea why I’m calling. We have to open Schrödinger’s box every time, having a conversation to figure out whether it’s OK to have a conversation. Plus, voice calls are emotionally high-bandwidth, which is why it’s so weirdly exhausting to be interrupted by one. (We apparently find voicemail even more excruciating: Studies show that more than a fifth of all voice messages are never listened to.)
The telephone, in other words, doesn’t provide any information about status, so we are constantly interrupting one another.”
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Clive Thompson on the Death of the Phone Call - Wired.com via marbury (via ultralaser)
GODS I HOPE SO. I hate talking on the phone, my mind does not work that way - it’s pretty much facial interaction or internet interaction. If I don’t have something to look at, bam, I’m pretty much spacing out. Which makes me pretty receptive to podcasts on long trips, because the information sinks in (unless I space out and forget about what I’m listening to…which I NEVER DO, ahem). It’s also kind of weird because I don’t like making extended eye contact, but face to face interaction is much easier for me than phone conversation.
Also, I HATE calling people I don’t know (at all or very well). I sooo much prefer email or texting.
(via chelle-shock)
AMAZING. My parents frequently go on about the decline of the modern world because they can’t reach people STRAIGHT AWAY on the phone. I don’t like being interrupted, whether it by by phone or in person, and I’ve always been made to feel like a total freak by baby boomers.