Will talking on the phone soon seem as old-fashioned as this vintage model? Photograph: Rick Gunn/AP

This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for workrelated purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.

In an era when literacy and the written word are supposed to be in decline, much of what we say to each other relies on typing on various kinds of screen, in the home and outside it. Ofcom has just announced that there has been a 5% fall in calls made on landlines and mobiles. In 2011, 58% of people sent texts, while only 47% used their mobiles to speak to someone. Now that 39% of the population owns smartphones, the written word – in the form of emails, texts and Google searches – has overtaken the ringtone. Making calls and speaking to someone has become the heritage technology on phones, a quaint reminder of the days when they were black plastic bricks with antennae carried by advertising executives shouting that they were on the train. On Monday the novelist Jon McGregor created an ongoing Twitter short story about a mysterious train journey to Matlock while on the train, and I read it, in the quiet carriage with the ringer off, on another train on a different journey.

The uses of the smartphone are endless but the number of calls made on them is declining, while landlines gather dust, rung only by cold callers selling double glazing. Interrupting someone's day to ring them always seemed to me an intrusion when you had no idea what they might be doing when you rang ("I'm in the queue to board a plane. Is this urgent?"), and voicemail messages sound incoherent compared with the tersely eloquent text message, which gets straight to the point. Twitter and Facebook messages come directly into my email inbox. Until I disabled them, I was assaulted with alerts and badges telling me someone had made contact.

When I got an email account in the late 90s, I encouraged people to use it, rather than ring me so I could work in peace, uninterrupted. I still prefer to email so that the recipient has a record of what it is I'm contacting them about and I can refer them back to it if there is confusion. Gradually, my phone ceased to ring. I discouraged people from calling my mobile unless it was urgent, as I reasoned that, if I was out, I was out, and talking to my editor about proofs while about to get on a bus seemed pointless.

Perhaps in the future the idea of talking to a disembodied voice will seem as bizarre as it did to Proust when, in Remembrance of Things Past, he describes the narrator's first ever phone call, to his grandmother. Yet I miss the intimacy of this most direct of speech, the voice in your ear talking straight into your own head. You missed the body language but, without it, the inflection of the voice was magnified. I felt I could really concentrate when I had a phone conversation, until I noticed the suspicious clicking at the other end of the line of the fingers playing computer solitaire or even answering emails. Perhaps all that will be left in the end is phone sex, as porn, like cockroaches, inherits the earth.

Available on: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/20/death-of-the-phone-call>

Glossary:

Ofcom: Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Will talking on the phone soon seem as old-fashioned as this vintage model? Photograph: Rick Gunn/AP

This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for workrelated purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.

In an era when literacy and the written word are supposed to be in decline, much of what we say to each other relies on typing on various kinds of screen, in the home and outside it. Ofcom has just announced that there has been a 5% fall in calls made on landlines and mobiles. In 2011, 58% of people sent texts, while only 47% used their mobiles to speak to someone. Now that 39% of the population owns smartphones, the written word – in the form of emails, texts and Google searches – has overtaken the ringtone. Making calls and speaking to someone has become the heritage technology on phones, a quaint reminder of the days when they were black plastic bricks with antennae carried by advertising executives shouting that they were on the train. On Monday the novelist Jon McGregor created an ongoing Twitter short story about a mysterious train journey to Matlock while on the train, and I read it, in the quiet carriage with the ringer off, on another train on a different journey.

The uses of the smartphone are endless but the number of calls made on them is declining, while landlines gather dust, rung only by cold callers selling double glazing. Interrupting someone's day to ring them always seemed to me an intrusion when you had no idea what they might be doing when you rang ("I'm in the queue to board a plane. Is this urgent?"), and voicemail messages sound incoherent compared with the tersely eloquent text message, which gets straight to the point. Twitter and Facebook messages come directly into my email inbox. Until I disabled them, I was assaulted with alerts and badges telling me someone had made contact.

When I got an email account in the late 90s, I encouraged people to use it, rather than ring me so I could work in peace, uninterrupted. I still prefer to email so that the recipient has a record of what it is I'm contacting them about and I can refer them back to it if there is confusion. Gradually, my phone ceased to ring. I discouraged people from calling my mobile unless it was urgent, as I reasoned that, if I was out, I was out, and talking to my editor about proofs while about to get on a bus seemed pointless.

Perhaps in the future the idea of talking to a disembodied voice will seem as bizarre as it did to Proust when, in Remembrance of Things Past, he describes the narrator's first ever phone call, to his grandmother. Yet I miss the intimacy of this most direct of speech, the voice in your ear talking straight into your own head. You missed the body language but, without it, the inflection of the voice was magnified. I felt I could really concentrate when I had a phone conversation, until I noticed the suspicious clicking at the other end of the line of the fingers playing computer solitaire or even answering emails. Perhaps all that will be left in the end is phone sex, as porn, like cockroaches, inherits the earth.

Available on: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/20/death-of-the-phone-call>

Glossary:

Ofcom: Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Will talking on the phone soon seem as old-fashioned as this vintage model? Photograph: Rick Gunn/AP

This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for workrelated purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.

In an era when literacy and the written word are supposed to be in decline, much of what we say to each other relies on typing on various kinds of screen, in the home and outside it. Ofcom has just announced that there has been a 5% fall in calls made on landlines and mobiles. In 2011, 58% of people sent texts, while only 47% used their mobiles to speak to someone. Now that 39% of the population owns smartphones, the written word – in the form of emails, texts and Google searches – has overtaken the ringtone. Making calls and speaking to someone has become the heritage technology on phones, a quaint reminder of the days when they were black plastic bricks with antennae carried by advertising executives shouting that they were on the train. On Monday the novelist Jon McGregor created an ongoing Twitter short story about a mysterious train journey to Matlock while on the train, and I read it, in the quiet carriage with the ringer off, on another train on a different journey.

The uses of the smartphone are endless but the number of calls made on them is declining, while landlines gather dust, rung only by cold callers selling double glazing. Interrupting someone's day to ring them always seemed to me an intrusion when you had no idea what they might be doing when you rang ("I'm in the queue to board a plane. Is this urgent?"), and voicemail messages sound incoherent compared with the tersely eloquent text message, which gets straight to the point. Twitter and Facebook messages come directly into my email inbox. Until I disabled them, I was assaulted with alerts and badges telling me someone had made contact.

When I got an email account in the late 90s, I encouraged people to use it, rather than ring me so I could work in peace, uninterrupted. I still prefer to email so that the recipient has a record of what it is I'm contacting them about and I can refer them back to it if there is confusion. Gradually, my phone ceased to ring. I discouraged people from calling my mobile unless it was urgent, as I reasoned that, if I was out, I was out, and talking to my editor about proofs while about to get on a bus seemed pointless.

Perhaps in the future the idea of talking to a disembodied voice will seem as bizarre as it did to Proust when, in Remembrance of Things Past, he describes the narrator's first ever phone call, to his grandmother. Yet I miss the intimacy of this most direct of speech, the voice in your ear talking straight into your own head. You missed the body language but, without it, the inflection of the voice was magnified. I felt I could really concentrate when I had a phone conversation, until I noticed the suspicious clicking at the other end of the line of the fingers playing computer solitaire or even answering emails. Perhaps all that will be left in the end is phone sex, as porn, like cockroaches, inherits the earth.

Available on: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/20/death-of-the-phone-call>

Glossary:

Ofcom: Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Will talking on the phone soon seem as old-fashioned as this vintage model? Photograph: Rick Gunn/AP

This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for workrelated purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.

In an era when literacy and the written word are supposed to be in decline, much of what we say to each other relies on typing on various kinds of screen, in the home and outside it. Ofcom has just announced that there has been a 5% fall in calls made on landlines and mobiles. In 2011, 58% of people sent texts, while only 47% used their mobiles to speak to someone. Now that 39% of the population owns smartphones, the written word – in the form of emails, texts and Google searches – has overtaken the ringtone. Making calls and speaking to someone has become the heritage technology on phones, a quaint reminder of the days when they were black plastic bricks with antennae carried by advertising executives shouting that they were on the train. On Monday the novelist Jon McGregor created an ongoing Twitter short story about a mysterious train journey to Matlock while on the train, and I read it, in the quiet carriage with the ringer off, on another train on a different journey.

The uses of the smartphone are endless but the number of calls made on them is declining, while landlines gather dust, rung only by cold callers selling double glazing. Interrupting someone's day to ring them always seemed to me an intrusion when you had no idea what they might be doing when you rang ("I'm in the queue to board a plane. Is this urgent?"), and voicemail messages sound incoherent compared with the tersely eloquent text message, which gets straight to the point. Twitter and Facebook messages come directly into my email inbox. Until I disabled them, I was assaulted with alerts and badges telling me someone had made contact.

When I got an email account in the late 90s, I encouraged people to use it, rather than ring me so I could work in peace, uninterrupted. I still prefer to email so that the recipient has a record of what it is I'm contacting them about and I can refer them back to it if there is confusion. Gradually, my phone ceased to ring. I discouraged people from calling my mobile unless it was urgent, as I reasoned that, if I was out, I was out, and talking to my editor about proofs while about to get on a bus seemed pointless.

Perhaps in the future the idea of talking to a disembodied voice will seem as bizarre as it did to Proust when, in Remembrance of Things Past, he describes the narrator's first ever phone call, to his grandmother. Yet I miss the intimacy of this most direct of speech, the voice in your ear talking straight into your own head. You missed the body language but, without it, the inflection of the voice was magnified. I felt I could really concentrate when I had a phone conversation, until I noticed the suspicious clicking at the other end of the line of the fingers playing computer solitaire or even answering emails. Perhaps all that will be left in the end is phone sex, as porn, like cockroaches, inherits the earth.

Available on: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/20/death-of-the-phone-call>

Glossary:

Ofcom: Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Will talking on the phone soon seem as old-fashioned as this vintage model? Photograph: Rick Gunn/AP

This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for workrelated purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.

In an era when literacy and the written word are supposed to be in decline, much of what we say to each other relies on typing on various kinds of screen, in the home and outside it. Ofcom has just announced that there has been a 5% fall in calls made on landlines and mobiles. In 2011, 58% of people sent texts, while only 47% used their mobiles to speak to someone. Now that 39% of the population owns smartphones, the written word – in the form of emails, texts and Google searches – has overtaken the ringtone. Making calls and speaking to someone has become the heritage technology on phones, a quaint reminder of the days when they were black plastic bricks with antennae carried by advertising executives shouting that they were on the train. On Monday the novelist Jon McGregor created an ongoing Twitter short story about a mysterious train journey to Matlock while on the train, and I read it, in the quiet carriage with the ringer off, on another train on a different journey.

The uses of the smartphone are endless but the number of calls made on them is declining, while landlines gather dust, rung only by cold callers selling double glazing. Interrupting someone's day to ring them always seemed to me an intrusion when you had no idea what they might be doing when you rang ("I'm in the queue to board a plane. Is this urgent?"), and voicemail messages sound incoherent compared with the tersely eloquent text message, which gets straight to the point. Twitter and Facebook messages come directly into my email inbox. Until I disabled them, I was assaulted with alerts and badges telling me someone had made contact.

When I got an email account in the late 90s, I encouraged people to use it, rather than ring me so I could work in peace, uninterrupted. I still prefer to email so that the recipient has a record of what it is I'm contacting them about and I can refer them back to it if there is confusion. Gradually, my phone ceased to ring. I discouraged people from calling my mobile unless it was urgent, as I reasoned that, if I was out, I was out, and talking to my editor about proofs while about to get on a bus seemed pointless.

Perhaps in the future the idea of talking to a disembodied voice will seem as bizarre as it did to Proust when, in Remembrance of Things Past, he describes the narrator's first ever phone call, to his grandmother. Yet I miss the intimacy of this most direct of speech, the voice in your ear talking straight into your own head. You missed the body language but, without it, the inflection of the voice was magnified. I felt I could really concentrate when I had a phone conversation, until I noticed the suspicious clicking at the other end of the line of the fingers playing computer solitaire or even answering emails. Perhaps all that will be left in the end is phone sex, as porn, like cockroaches, inherits the earth.

Available on: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/20/death-of-the-phone-call>

Glossary:

Ofcom: Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Will talking on the phone soon seem as old-fashioned as this vintage model? Photograph: Rick Gunn/AP

This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for workrelated purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.

In an era when literacy and the written word are supposed to be in decline, much of what we say to each other relies on typing on various kinds of screen, in the home and outside it. Ofcom has just announced that there has been a 5% fall in calls made on landlines and mobiles. In 2011, 58% of people sent texts, while only 47% used their mobiles to speak to someone. Now that 39% of the population owns smartphones, the written word – in the form of emails, texts and Google searches – has overtaken the ringtone. Making calls and speaking to someone has become the heritage technology on phones, a quaint reminder of the days when they were black plastic bricks with antennae carried by advertising executives shouting that they were on the train. On Monday the novelist Jon McGregor created an ongoing Twitter short story about a mysterious train journey to Matlock while on the train, and I read it, in the quiet carriage with the ringer off, on another train on a different journey.

The uses of the smartphone are endless but the number of calls made on them is declining, while landlines gather dust, rung only by cold callers selling double glazing. Interrupting someone's day to ring them always seemed to me an intrusion when you had no idea what they might be doing when you rang ("I'm in the queue to board a plane. Is this urgent?"), and voicemail messages sound incoherent compared with the tersely eloquent text message, which gets straight to the point. Twitter and Facebook messages come directly into my email inbox. Until I disabled them, I was assaulted with alerts and badges telling me someone had made contact.

When I got an email account in the late 90s, I encouraged people to use it, rather than ring me so I could work in peace, uninterrupted. I still prefer to email so that the recipient has a record of what it is I'm contacting them about and I can refer them back to it if there is confusion. Gradually, my phone ceased to ring. I discouraged people from calling my mobile unless it was urgent, as I reasoned that, if I was out, I was out, and talking to my editor about proofs while about to get on a bus seemed pointless.

Perhaps in the future the idea of talking to a disembodied voice will seem as bizarre as it did to Proust when, in Remembrance of Things Past, he describes the narrator's first ever phone call, to his grandmother. Yet I miss the intimacy of this most direct of speech, the voice in your ear talking straight into your own head. You missed the body language but, without it, the inflection of the voice was magnified. I felt I could really concentrate when I had a phone conversation, until I noticed the suspicious clicking at the other end of the line of the fingers playing computer solitaire or even answering emails. Perhaps all that will be left in the end is phone sex, as porn, like cockroaches, inherits the earth.

Available on: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/20/death-of-the-phone-call>

Glossary:

Ofcom: Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Will talking on the phone soon seem as old-fashioned as this vintage model? Photograph: Rick Gunn/AP

This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for workrelated purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.

In an era when literacy and the written word are supposed to be in decline, much of what we say to each other relies on typing on various kinds of screen, in the home and outside it. Ofcom has just announced that there has been a 5% fall in calls made on landlines and mobiles. In 2011, 58% of people sent texts, while only 47% used their mobiles to speak to someone. Now that 39% of the population owns smartphones, the written word – in the form of emails, texts and Google searches – has overtaken the ringtone. Making calls and speaking to someone has become the heritage technology on phones, a quaint reminder of the days when they were black plastic bricks with antennae carried by advertising executives shouting that they were on the train. On Monday the novelist Jon McGregor created an ongoing Twitter short story about a mysterious train journey to Matlock while on the train, and I read it, in the quiet carriage with the ringer off, on another train on a different journey.

The uses of the smartphone are endless but the number of calls made on them is declining, while landlines gather dust, rung only by cold callers selling double glazing. Interrupting someone's day to ring them always seemed to me an intrusion when you had no idea what they might be doing when you rang ("I'm in the queue to board a plane. Is this urgent?"), and voicemail messages sound incoherent compared with the tersely eloquent text message, which gets straight to the point. Twitter and Facebook messages come directly into my email inbox. Until I disabled them, I was assaulted with alerts and badges telling me someone had made contact.

When I got an email account in the late 90s, I encouraged people to use it, rather than ring me so I could work in peace, uninterrupted. I still prefer to email so that the recipient has a record of what it is I'm contacting them about and I can refer them back to it if there is confusion. Gradually, my phone ceased to ring. I discouraged people from calling my mobile unless it was urgent, as I reasoned that, if I was out, I was out, and talking to my editor about proofs while about to get on a bus seemed pointless.

Perhaps in the future the idea of talking to a disembodied voice will seem as bizarre as it did to Proust when, in Remembrance of Things Past, he describes the narrator's first ever phone call, to his grandmother. Yet I miss the intimacy of this most direct of speech, the voice in your ear talking straight into your own head. You missed the body language but, without it, the inflection of the voice was magnified. I felt I could really concentrate when I had a phone conversation, until I noticed the suspicious clicking at the other end of the line of the fingers playing computer solitaire or even answering emails. Perhaps all that will be left in the end is phone sex, as porn, like cockroaches, inherits the earth.

Available on: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/20/death-of-the-phone-call>

Glossary:

Ofcom: Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Will talking on the phone soon seem as old-fashioned as this vintage model? Photograph: Rick Gunn/AP

This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for workrelated purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.

In an era when literacy and the written word are supposed to be in decline, much of what we say to each other relies on typing on various kinds of screen, in the home and outside it. Ofcom has just announced that there has been a 5% fall in calls made on landlines and mobiles. In 2011, 58% of people sent texts, while only 47% used their mobiles to speak to someone. Now that 39% of the population owns smartphones, the written word – in the form of emails, texts and Google searches – has overtaken the ringtone. Making calls and speaking to someone has become the heritage technology on phones, a quaint reminder of the days when they were black plastic bricks with antennae carried by advertising executives shouting that they were on the train. On Monday the novelist Jon McGregor created an ongoing Twitter short story about a mysterious train journey to Matlock while on the train, and I read it, in the quiet carriage with the ringer off, on another train on a different journey.

The uses of the smartphone are endless but the number of calls made on them is declining, while landlines gather dust, rung only by cold callers selling double glazing. Interrupting someone's day to ring them always seemed to me an intrusion when you had no idea what they might be doing when you rang ("I'm in the queue to board a plane. Is this urgent?"), and voicemail messages sound incoherent compared with the tersely eloquent text message, which gets straight to the point. Twitter and Facebook messages come directly into my email inbox. Until I disabled them, I was assaulted with alerts and badges telling me someone had made contact.

When I got an email account in the late 90s, I encouraged people to use it, rather than ring me so I could work in peace, uninterrupted. I still prefer to email so that the recipient has a record of what it is I'm contacting them about and I can refer them back to it if there is confusion. Gradually, my phone ceased to ring. I discouraged people from calling my mobile unless it was urgent, as I reasoned that, if I was out, I was out, and talking to my editor about proofs while about to get on a bus seemed pointless.

Perhaps in the future the idea of talking to a disembodied voice will seem as bizarre as it did to Proust when, in Remembrance of Things Past, he describes the narrator's first ever phone call, to his grandmother. Yet I miss the intimacy of this most direct of speech, the voice in your ear talking straight into your own head. You missed the body language but, without it, the inflection of the voice was magnified. I felt I could really concentrate when I had a phone conversation, until I noticed the suspicious clicking at the other end of the line of the fingers playing computer solitaire or even answering emails. Perhaps all that will be left in the end is phone sex, as porn, like cockroaches, inherits the earth.

Available on: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/20/death-of-the-phone-call>

Glossary:

Ofcom: Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Will talking on the phone soon seem as old-fashioned as this vintage model? Photograph: Rick Gunn/AP

This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for workrelated purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.

In an era when literacy and the written word are supposed to be in decline, much of what we say to each other relies on typing on various kinds of screen, in the home and outside it. Ofcom has just announced that there has been a 5% fall in calls made on landlines and mobiles. In 2011, 58% of people sent texts, while only 47% used their mobiles to speak to someone. Now that 39% of the population owns smartphones, the written word – in the form of emails, texts and Google searches – has overtaken the ringtone. Making calls and speaking to someone has become the heritage technology on phones, a quaint reminder of the days when they were black plastic bricks with antennae carried by advertising executives shouting that they were on the train. On Monday the novelist Jon McGregor created an ongoing Twitter short story about a mysterious train journey to Matlock while on the train, and I read it, in the quiet carriage with the ringer off, on another train on a different journey.

The uses of the smartphone are endless but the number of calls made on them is declining, while landlines gather dust, rung only by cold callers selling double glazing. Interrupting someone's day to ring them always seemed to me an intrusion when you had no idea what they might be doing when you rang ("I'm in the queue to board a plane. Is this urgent?"), and voicemail messages sound incoherent compared with the tersely eloquent text message, which gets straight to the point. Twitter and Facebook messages come directly into my email inbox. Until I disabled them, I was assaulted with alerts and badges telling me someone had made contact.

When I got an email account in the late 90s, I encouraged people to use it, rather than ring me so I could work in peace, uninterrupted. I still prefer to email so that the recipient has a record of what it is I'm contacting them about and I can refer them back to it if there is confusion. Gradually, my phone ceased to ring. I discouraged people from calling my mobile unless it was urgent, as I reasoned that, if I was out, I was out, and talking to my editor about proofs while about to get on a bus seemed pointless.

Perhaps in the future the idea of talking to a disembodied voice will seem as bizarre as it did to Proust when, in Remembrance of Things Past, he describes the narrator's first ever phone call, to his grandmother. Yet I miss the intimacy of this most direct of speech, the voice in your ear talking straight into your own head. You missed the body language but, without it, the inflection of the voice was magnified. I felt I could really concentrate when I had a phone conversation, until I noticed the suspicious clicking at the other end of the line of the fingers playing computer solitaire or even answering emails. Perhaps all that will be left in the end is phone sex, as porn, like cockroaches, inherits the earth.

Available on: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/20/death-of-the-phone-call>

Glossary:

Ofcom: Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

ACIDENTES DE TRÂNSITO: MAIOR CAUSA DE MORTE DE JOVENS NO MUNDO

Um relatório divulgado em maio de 2012 revela que as ruas e estradas hoje são a maior causa de morte de pessoas com mais de 10 anos de idade, e as mortes no trânsito constituem uma epidemia global de saúde que já alcançou proporções críticas.

O relatório “Estradas Seguras e Sustentáveis”, lançado pela Campanha pela Segurança Global nas Estradas, diz que a segurança rodoviária é um dos maiores desafios de desenvolvimento no mundo e prevê que, se não forem tomadas medidas urgentes, o número de mortos no trânsito suba de 1,3 milhão para 2 milhões por ano. Hoje, 3.500 pessoas morrem por dia em incidentes relacionados ao trânsito, e 50 milhões se ferem anualmente nas ruas e estradas do mundo.

O relatório atribui o alto número de fatalidades às políticas de transporte que priorizam veículos, rodovias e velocidade, em detrimento das pessoas e da segurança. A grande maioria dos mortos no trânsito vem de países em desenvolvimento, e 20 países são responsáveis por 70% das mortes globais no trânsito. Crianças e jovens são os mais afetados, tanto que acidentes de trânsito hoje constituem a maior fonte isolada de mortes de pessoas na faixa dos 10 a 24 anos de idade em todo o mundo. Em 2004, o último ano para o qual há dados abrangentes disponíveis, acidentes de trânsito mataram mais crianças de 5 a 14 anos que a malária, a diarreia e a AIDS.

O relatório avisa que, se nada for feito, a espiral crescente de mortos e feridos no trânsito será um obstáculo importante a impedir que o mundo atinja as metas de educação e redução da pobreza definidas nas metas de desenvolvimento do milênio. Por sua vez, a Campanha pela Segurança Global nas Estradas está exortando líderes mundiais a adotarem ações urgentes para integrar o transporte sustentável e a segurança nas estradas na pauta da conferência Rio+20. A campanha avisa que não existe "receita mágica oculta" para lidar com a segurança nas estradas, mas diz que, diferentemente de muitas outras epidemias de saúde, há intervenções possíveis que são simples, baratas e testadas, e que simplesmente não estão sendo aplicadas ou praticadas. Tais intervenções incluem a implementação das normas sobre o uso de capacetes, cintos de segurança e a proibição efetiva de consumo de álcool antes de dirigir, além do reforço da segurança dos veículos.

Kevin Watkins, pesquisador sênior do Brookings Institution e autor do relatório citado, informa que "a epidemia de ferimentos e mortes no trânsito é uma fonte de pobreza, sofrimento humano e desperdício econômico em escala global". Segundo Watkins, "nas próximas duas décadas a frota de veículos nos países mais pobres do mundo vai aumentar em ritmo inusitado. Diferentemente.

de algumas outras questões que serão discutidas na conferência Rio+20, esta envolve poucas incógnitas. Não se trata de ciência avançada, mas, mesmo assim, dá para perceber que os avanços têm sido dolorosamente lentos. Doadores bilaterais e o Banco Mundial vêm falando há anos em priorizar a segurança das estradas em seus programas infraestruturais, mas o discurso ainda não rendeu resultados."

O relatório faz recomendações que podem ajudar a prevenir mortes nas estradas, incluindo regulamentação mais rígida para impedir que as montadoras de veículos disputem uma corrida para reduzir as medidas de segurança dos veículos nos países mais pobres. O texto diz que são necessários mais US$200 milhões por ano para apoiar o desenvolvimento de estratégias nacionais de segurança nas estradas nos países em que ocorrem mais mortes no trânsito.

KELLY, A. GUARDIAN (Trad. Clara Allaín) Disponível em: < http://folha.com/no1084645 > Acesso em: 02 maio 2012.