The First Obituary (1960s)
The death of the phone call has been greatly exaggerated—roughly once per decade since the Kennedy administration. The first funeral notice arrived with the telegram's brief renaissance in the 1960s. Technology forecaster Arthur C. Clarke confidently predicted that "voice communication will be replaced by more efficient written methods by 1980." AT&T executives were reportedly sweating bullets, which is hilarious in retrospect since they were about to enjoy their most profitable decades ever.
Photo: Arthur C. Clarke, via c8.alamy.com
But Clarke wasn't alone in his certainty. The RAND Corporation published a study suggesting that "real-time voice communication is an inefficient use of telecommunications infrastructure." They recommended that businesses transition to "asynchronous text-based systems" for maximum productivity. Corporate America nodded sagely and then spent the next twenty years installing more phone lines.
Enter the Fax Machine Prophets (1970s-80s)
By the late 1970s, a new champion had emerged to finally put the phone call out of its misery: the fax machine. Business consultants declared that fax technology would eliminate the need for voice calls entirely. Why waste time talking when you could send documents instantly?
"The telephone conversation is becoming obsolete," announced telecommunications expert Dr. James Martin in 1979. "Facsimile transmission will handle 90% of business communication by 1990." Meanwhile, phone usage was actually increasing by 15% annually, but apparently nobody told Dr. Martin.
The fax funeral tour continued through the 1980s. Futurist Alvin Toffler wrote that voice calls were "a relic of the industrial age" that would be "swept away by the information revolution." AT&T responded to these dire predictions by... breaking itself up into seven regional companies to handle all the phone traffic they couldn't manage.
Photo: Alvin Toffler, via www.pentair.com
The Email Executioners (1990s)
Just when the fax machine hype died down, email arrived to finish the job. This time, the experts were absolutely, positively certain they had found the phone call's kryptonite. MIT's Nicholas Negroponte declared that email would "eliminate voice communication for all but the most personal conversations" by 2000.
Photo: Nicholas Negroponte, via m.media-amazon.com
Wired magazine ran a cover story titled "The Death of Talk" in 1997, featuring interviews with tech luminaries who agreed that phone calls were hopelessly outdated. "Email is more efficient, less intrusive, and creates a permanent record," explained one Silicon Valley CEO who probably spent four hours daily on conference calls.
The predictions were specific and confident. Business Week reported that "phone usage will decline by 60% in the next decade as email adoption reaches critical mass." Instead, phone usage increased by 40% between 1995 and 2005, even as email exploded. Apparently, Americans were capable of doing both.
The Text Message Undertakers (2000s)
Undeterred by their previous failures, the communication experts regrouped around text messaging. This time was different, they insisted. SMS was instant, convenient, and perfect for the mobile age. "Voice calls are finally finished," announced tech analyst John Dvorak in 2005. "Text messaging will replace 80% of phone conversations within five years."
The numbers seemed to support them. Text message volume exploded from 12 billion messages in 2000 to 2.3 trillion in 2010. Surely this meant the end of voice calls? Not exactly. Phone call volume also increased during the same period, rising from 2.2 trillion minutes in 2000 to 2.3 trillion minutes in 2010.
Young people were texting constantly, leading to breathless headlines about "The Generation That Forgot How to Talk." Yet somehow, these same text-obsessed teenagers were also making more phone calls than any previous generation, thanks to unlimited calling plans and mobile phones they carried everywhere.
The Smartphone Paradox (2010s)
The arrival of smartphones should have been the final nail in the phone call's coffin. After all, these devices offered email, texting, instant messaging, video calls, and social media—why would anyone need to actually talk?
Tech journalist Sarah Lacy wrote in 2012 that "the phone call is the most inefficient form of communication ever invented" and predicted its "complete obsolescence within this decade." App developers agreed, creating hundreds of alternatives to voice calling.
Yet something strange happened: the device that was supposed to kill phone calls made them more popular than ever. Americans made 2.4 billion phone calls daily in 2020, compared to 1.8 billion in 2000. The smartphone didn't eliminate voice communication—it put a telephone in everyone's pocket.
The Slack Attack and Beyond (2020s)
Not to be outdone, the 2020s brought new champions to slay the persistent phone call dragon. Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord were going to finally, definitively replace voice communication with more efficient alternatives.
"The pandemic proved that asynchronous communication is superior," declared remote work expert Cal Newport in 2021. "Phone calls are an outdated interrupt-driven communication method." This prediction arrived during a year when Zoom reported a 30x increase in daily meeting participants, suggesting that people were actually talking to each other more, not less.
Why the Phone Call Refuses to Die
After fifty years of confident predictions, phone calls remain stubbornly alive. Americans make billions of calls annually, video calling has exploded, and podcasts—essentially one-way phone calls—are more popular than ever.
The experts keep missing the same fundamental truth: different communication methods serve different purposes. Email is great for detailed information, texting works for quick coordination, and phone calls excel at nuanced conversation, emotional connection, and complex problem-solving.
The phone call's secret weapon isn't efficiency—it's humanity. Voice carries emotion, tone, and subtlety that text struggles to convey. When relationships matter more than productivity, people reach for the phone.
The Immortal Conversation
Every new communication technology promises to finally kill the phone call, and every prediction fails for the same reason: they assume efficiency is the only thing people value. But humans are social creatures who crave connection, and sometimes that connection requires the sound of another person's voice.
The next time an expert confidently predicts the death of phone calls, remember: they've been planning this funeral for fifty years, and the guest of honor keeps refusing to show up.
