I confess, I've made calls at odd hours of the day to avoid certain conversations... Why spend 10 minutes explaining why you can't book an author on the show if you can spend 30 seconds, right? So you'd think I'd be thrilled by a new service that let's you skip the conversation and go right to voicemail. But, I'm not so sure. It sort of takes the sport out of it, sure (you never know when a publicist in LA will actually pick up at 7am), but are there wider implications? As The New York Times reported yesterday:

Indirect communication, experts suggest, may be turning some people into digital-era solipsists more interested in broadcasting information than in real time give-and-take....

Unlike text messaging or e-mailing, James Katz, head of the center for mobile communications studies at Rutgers University, said, telephone communiques had been seen as requiring a sacrifice of time and energy and a higher level of commitment on the part of the communicator. Not anymore.

Missed or indirect communication can often actually be preferable, Mr. Katz said. "You pretend to be communicating, when you're actually stifling communication," he said.

Katz goes on to compare a phone call to wildfire — you just don't know where it's going to go. Which is sort of the point.

We already have services that make fake "excuse" calls to get you out of bad dates or boring meetings, and caller ID is perfect for screening people out. Maybe I'm just being a Luddite here, but this all seems to be sliding down that old cliched slippery slope.

But then again, I'm posting this on a blog instead of talking face-to-face...