[Rob Pearson]

Interesting article talking about how we may some day call less, but talk more...

We’re moving, in other words, toward a fascinating cultural transition: the death of the telephone call. This shift is particularly stark among the young. Some college students I know go days without talking into their smartphones at all. I was recently hanging out with a twentysomething entrepreneur who fumbled around for 30 seconds trying to find the option that actually let him dial someone.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/0...son_deadphone/

[ekim68]

I was gonna start another thread on this, but this seems like a good place...We're using our communications quite differently nowadays...

Data use now the norm on cellphones

[Rob Pearson]

Very interesting article with some good figures about data usage. It doesn't surprise me that Verizon users use data more as from what I always hear from various people Verizon has a better (faster) data network in most areas... So of course more data is going to go across it each month lol.

[loserOlimbs]

I liked this part!

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.)

And this is without the added evasion given to say a business contact calling on a weekend. Its ignored, he leaves a voicemail, and the voicemail is feared and resented until Monday morning...

[Rob Pearson]

Haha, I'm totally with you on the business contact voice mail!

I personally hate voicemail. I started using Google Voice (http://google.com/voice) because of it's ability to transcribe the voicemail into text so I could just read it instead of screwing around with the whole voicemail menu on my cell and having to re-listen for phone numbers because of people saying them to fast and not repeating them and such. The transcription isn't perfect (but it's a free service-so who cares!) because not everyone talks so that a computer can understand them (or that I can even understand them sometimes) but man does it make life easier when it comes to dealing with that necessary evil.