Baby When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Al

Ezra, you can call me anytime, for any reason, or for no reason at all. You want to talk about your day, and how difficult it was to stay awake at that health care conference? I'm down. Want to chat about how freaking awesome the last episode of The Wire was? Even though I'm still watching Season 3 on DVD, I'll be happy to hear about it. Want to bitch about how much of a jerk Yglesias is, and why doesn't he return your calls, and how Reihan isn't nearly as funny as he thinks? I am so there.

Okay, more seriously, I have to completely disagree with the legions bemoaning the antiquity of telephonic technologies. Of course there is something different about speaking over the telephone. It exists in this strange netherworld of communcatory obligations. When you are speaking to someone who is in the same room as you, it's unspeakably rude to multitask - to play video games, or read a magazine, or go to the bathroom. When you're communicating via IM, or e-mail, or Pony Express, it's entirely expected that you will be doing other things in the interim between conversational episodes, and that you won't necessarily drop all other activities the moment a new IM, letter, whatever arrives.

But the phone is different. You can't consume it at entirely your own pace, because the information arrives only as fast or as slow as your conversational partner chooses. But, because they're not there in the room with you, you can have something else going on in the background. In particular, because it only engages your mind and your ears, not your eyes or your hands, you can be doing something like cooking breakfast or sweeping the floors while on the phone. I like that. It's the best kind of multitasking, combining something necessary but both unenjoyable and uninteresting with something entirely interesting and stimulating at the same time.

And, I don't know about you guys, but my phone call range over a vastly wider array of topics than any normal, 'catching up' e-mail tends to. In an hour's time, I can catch up on months' worth of topics with an old friend, and not feel like a single second was wasted. And that's worth something.