There was a time when the best way to communicate with someone at a distance was to sit down with pen and paper and write a letter.  Then an occasional telephone call seemed to do the trick.  During holiday times, paper cards would be mailed, often with a short note enclosed.  Today we seem to have instant messaging and cell phones constantly connected to our ear.  But I'm not too sure that our ability to communicate is improving.  Based upon the side of a conversation I hear when it intrudes into my sense of space, rarely is there an exchange of concepts.  Rather, the person is asking which brand of laundry detergent to buy, or announcing they're at the mall.  Text messaging has a whole different vernacular for expressing meaning.  The sad outcome of some of this over-communication is that we seem to be losing touch with the traditional means for passing along information.  I've read letters written by instant message/text communicators in which the grammar was absolutely atrocious.   I've sat through meetings with hyper cell phone users who were unable to communicate a complex concept in any meaningful way.  Yes, we are evolving and I can accept that as a fiftyish diva I need to keep up with the evolution but I also think this step of evolution is more of a digression toward ignorance.