That's what the telephone is all about. The worst thing about the phone is that it demands people to be chronologically co-located. Voice-mail is only good for short bursts and horrible to sift trough. Ask anybody who gets more than a dozen at a time. The best thing about the phone is that two or more people can communicate in real time.
People can talk much faster than they can type.
If you had to sit and watch me type this missive, including all the backspaces and deleted sentences, you'd be clicking over to the Dilbert Zone in no time. The disjointedness of my statements and the participant's questions and comments was nothing less than disorienting. And while the interviewers got us off to rollicking beginnings, the sessions had no structure - no middle and certainly no end. The best thing about e-mail, indeed about newsgroups, lists and the World Wide Web as well, is that they are asynchronous. You need not be present to win.