No offense, Alexander Graham Bell, but your little invention has had its day.
I'm not the only one who thinks so. Banking firm JP Morgan is so out of love with the humble telephone that it plans to scrap voicemail for some employees. The company claims the move will save time and money.
To which I say, we can do better. Let's take this admirable first step to its inevitable conclusion and just abolish telephone conversations entirely.
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Does this sound outlandish? It shouldn't. Until relatively recently our only communication options — other than face-to-face — were the phone, a longhand letter, or a telegram. Now, we're gorging on every form of electronic contact, from email and text to Whatsapp messaging. It's just not possible for our brains to process all those interactions.
Something has to give, and it's the phone call. Like the once-mighty telegram, its fate is already sealed. According to a recent report by mobile data tracking firm Infomate, Americans now spend a hefty 26 minutes a day texting compared to six minutes a day on voice calls. And as for home phones, these days only old people use them. More than 45 percent of those under 18 now live in homes without landlines, up from 2.5 percent in 2003.
True, phone call alternatives are far from perfect: Spending huge chunks of your day tapping out messages on a mobile device is tedious, not to mention hard on the thumbs. But it's far less emotionally demanding than picking up your cell and engaging in spoken conversation. Plus, a silent scourge is infinitely preferable to one where you're forced to listen to the person sitting opposite you on the bus noisily reveal the details of their colonoscopy.
As for phones themselves, should we even call them that anymore? Nowadays the actual telephone call function is so low priority that it's practically unusable on most handsets.
But I admit, I'm feverishly anti-phone call for another reason: I break into a full body sweat at the mere thought of having to actually talk to someone on the telephone. On the rare occasions that it's unavoidable — usually when I'm begging Time Warner Cable to fix the internet — I do a terrible job, misreading verbal cues, talking over the other person, and stuttering anxiously. I'm about as articulate as an irritable 4-year-old.
It's why I rarely call my friends. It's not because I don't like them; I've just got so out of the habit of talking on the phone that I worry I'll express myself clumsily, or misread what the person at the end of the line is saying. The whole process feels intrusive and draining.
That's why Skype and FaceTime are so great — essential, even, for this British expat, whose main method of meaningful contact with U.K. family and friends is video calls. Here, unlike the traditional voice call, the communication experience is more rounded because you can read the other person's body language and facial expressions.
So go ahead and fret over our diminishing ability to have conversations in person, but don't mourn the loss of the phone call — and all those wasted free minutes. As society and technology evolves, so does our skill set. Just as most folks today wouldn't physically be able to settle an argument with a sword fight, most young people are now fairly incapable of making themselves understood on the telephone. So what? The phone call is dead. Long live its successors.
