Talk to those who make a good living singing, ranging from opera to street, and they laugh at the text folks who write off voice as finished.
The sound of the human voice is one of mankind's most primitive attachments to those other social animals David Brooks tells us about. Supposedly Johnny hears his mother's voice in the third trimester when swimming around in the amniotic fluid. And that bond is hard to break, even if the mother is a monster.
The phone, an intimate medium, tips off lots about the speaker. For that reason in itself, those who want to "read" another person will use the phone, if being there in-person isn't possible. Telemarketing trumps most other selling tactics. And, there's increased demand coming into my office for scripts for podcasts. Clients are migrating to Talk Shoe whose simplest level of service is free.
The difference in phone use is that talk in business has just been tamed, at least for a while. In real life, the chatterboxes never downsized the word count. Just ride mass transit that isn't going to, around, or from Manhattan.
Given the shift in commerce, employers and prospects for assignments don't interview us by phone on the first pass, as had been traditional. Before the call, there are forms to fill out, tests to take, beauty contests to parade in [as with submitting five killer ideas for positioning a new healthy snack], and more questions to answer. If we make it through all that, then we hear the voice of Zeus from on-high. With telecommuting going mainstream, that could be it, even for full-time jobs and major assignments.
In the normal course of business, those calls come soon enough if there is a problem, even a small one. The stress of the downturn has taught employers and clients to parachute into course correction quickly. In addition, the phone rings if opportunity is spotted.
Skype, cell, and i-everything are usually the way to go. All give the caller immediate access, 24/7 to us worker bees. There are those who practice great civility about respecting the time zone we are in. But they are becoming fewer. The recovery has broken open pent-up demand and the folks in Germany and China want to get on with it. Of course, we make a decision which calls we will take. Given the recovery, I am taking fewer after midnight New York time.
Incidentally, I learned to do that, like most things, through getting used and abused. A troubled executive in telecommunications in Europe would Skype me around 1 A.M. New York time and rail about national barriers to entry. Like a Henry James innocent I did do one proposal. Only one.
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