Get Off The Phone

Dodai Stewart observes the resurgence of text-based communications and issues a conflicted lament for the days when the phone was used to phone people:

The telephone gives communication an important, human layer: You can hear a person breathe, sigh, sniffle, cough. Inflections and tone give statements subtext and weight. But when it comes to finding or deciphering emotion in texting, IM and email, you might as well be using Morse code. The weird thing is that the less I talk on the phone, the less I want to talk on the phone. When it rings, I sometimes feel interrupted, annoyed or, you guessed it, reluctant to answer. Could it be that because it tends to reveal emotion, the very thing that makes talking on the phone so special is what makes some people avoid it?

I dispute the premise. It’s true that inflection and tone add subtext and weight. But so does the presentation and voice of a written message. And as everyone who’s tried to negotiate with a significant other on the phone is aware, inflection and tone are hardly clearer guides to deciphering a deeper meaning than the written word. Furthermore, the decline of landline phones have exposed the problems with long-distance voice communication: you can’t hear yourself on your cell phone, so you end up shouting, and your interlocutor shouts, and soon all you’ve done is yelled over each other, making a conversation unnecessarily frustrating and acrimonious. 

The phone sends me into sprawling fits of anxiety. The silences can be unbearable: I once had a girlfriend who was depressed while I was going through my own depressive episode. I think we once clocked three minutes of silence while on the phone. To say it compounded our problems is quite the understatement. Plus, what in the world are you supposed to do while you talk on the phone? They get mad at you if you’re caught reading a magazine or a comic book or a blog while talking. But there isn’t enough sensory stimulus during a phone call. It’s excruciating. Being a journalist requires a lot of phone communication, but I’m seeing this diminish, thankfully: I’ve done interviews with sensitive sources through texting. 

The rise of text-based long-distance communication is imperfect, but it solves many-if-not-most of these problems, at least until such a time as we can send each other holograms alerting us — complete with visual cues to our facial expression, the subtlest indicator of them all — to how we’re running late to the bar, or the need to pick up the diapers, or that we desperately need Obi-Wan Kenobi’s help.

Rejoinders are now demanded from phone-enthusiasts Ezra and Amanda.