That being said, I am one of those that have never been a fan of talking with people on the phone. I think it’s the lack of body language associated with it. With text-based communication you don’t expect body language cues, but talking on the phone is much closer to a face-to-face conversation so I notice the lack. Moreover, in the absence of visual cues to confirm or contradict that my presence (in the form of a phone call) is intrusive I have to assume that it is. So, again, I feel uncomfortable about calling people. Technically that has more to do with my own insecurities than a distrust or dislike of the technology, but it directly influences how I use – or in this case, don’t use – it.

I will admit that I share your concern about the declining art of conversation in the “Net Generation”. Even though much of my communication is done with text, a significant portion of it is concerned with arranging or re-hashing face-to-face encounters and those almost always involve conversations spanning many hours. I have two friends in particular that I basically have to plan to be there all day when they invite me to visit because we will start talking almost as soon as I get there (say 3pm) and are usually forced to end our conversation simply because it’s grossly late (say 3am) and we’re all falling asleep mid-sentence.

While I think the art of conversation is becoming rarer in the Digital Age, I *don’t* think it will ever really die – certainly not the way letter writing faded in the face of the telephone and, later, email. What it *will* do is evolve. I may, or may not, care for how it evolves, but that evolution would happen even without the plethora of communication options we now have available due to the simple fact that it is an application of language and language can evolve or die but it cannot be static.

- Sarah