I have occasion these days to remember how much my love for current forms of technological interaction is predicated on my extreme dislike of the telephone. It was obvious to me at a young age that I could have no real career as a journalist because the notion of picking up a phone and just, you know, talking to someone was horrifying. However more mature and confident I get in the rest of my life, this never changes.
Except now I can text or email or facebook message or gchat, all media of communication which permit 1. the ability to take one's time in response and 2. the ability to edit what one says, neither of which is true of the phone. If one has an outsize fear of saying something stupid, these two criteria are of high importance; let's not even get into the absurdity of rehearsing what one will say ahead of time.* These general preferences are broken for those family members who are not internerd-savvy, and for those of my friends who have a marked preference for phone conversations, which I accommodate as one accommodates all of a friend's shortcomings. But I would almost always rather email. If I am on the phone, and voluntarily, you may rest assured that you are a Big Deal, as far as I'm concerned.
*This is also my reason for disliking voice-only phone interviews: it combines all the modes of communication at which I have the most difficulty while allowing none of those in which I can excel, or even prove average.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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