Talk Is Dead

Farhad Manjoo applauds the apparent death of voice mail:

Every new way we develop of talking to one another—e-mail, text messaging, instant messaging, Twitter, etc.—is faster and more useful than leaving an audio message on someone's phone.

Improving on voice mail is just the beginning. All those means of "talking [sic] to one another" are all also much faster than actually talking to one another. If you have to converse on the phone or in person, you waste time saying hello, asking how the other person is, and then listening to the answer. Then once you say what you have to say, the other person might inconvenience you even further by having something to say in response. They might disagree with you, or offer an insight you hadn't thought of that will immediately alter your own thinking. The exchange might go in an entirely different direction as the result of the unanticipated dynamics of your exchange. These are all incredibly inefficient wastes of your valuable time. Don't stand for it any longer!