degradation of human conversations alongside our techie devices

welcome to the beginning of the domination of the 'i's (ie. iPhone and iPod Touch)! or 'the linear degradation of human conversations alongside our techie devices'?

the less tech-equipped may remember the days when the bigger proportion of our conversations with others were had face-to-face or chatting over the phone.

tracing the loss of human personality involved in human communication, we can maybe start with how appointments-setting became less and less reliable due to the ease of altering appointment arrangements ('i'm running late, pls give me 15mins' / 'i'm sorry something impt. came up so i won't be able to make it today') through a mobile phone call or after that, SMS.

then there was the advent of messenger, msn and otherwise. we know (i more than most perhaps, speaking from not-so-sweet experiences) how some inflections in human conversations do not transmit that well over msn - sarcasm and uniqueness of individual laughter(s) for example; now everyone laughs in the same few ways: lol, hehe, haha, ahaha are some egs (at one time this might have freaked people out but now no, it is so totally cool). this not only creates misunderstandings in communication but limits our use of language in its fuller far richer form. i guess the key point about msn convos is the difficulty to maintain the integrity of feelings that are being sent over together with the set of typed alphabets that preludes the many 'enter's. last night at nuh after training i completed my meal saying 'yum yum' - in a certain way. shu sitting beside me immed. recognized that i did not actually enjoy my meal and 'yum yum' was my way of communicating that. rarely though would i bother trying 'yum yum' to mean 'that was a yucky meal' over msn.

now i reach my actual point for this entry - the marvelous contribution of 'eBuddy for iPhone and iPod Touch' in this modern trend of having conversations while being as far as possible from each other. at first i was just mostly tickled by how iUsers' IMs all begin with capitalisations; at the juxtaposition of a trendy casual highly-abbreviated and short-formed mode of convo with an age-old prim and proper grammatical rule. it just feels laughable. now i realize something else - my convos with iUsers are more chopchop, direct and words-saving than they ever were with msn convo-ers. thanks in part to the lessened ease of handling iKeys compared to ease arising from our years of practice on keyboards, and in part that big iSelling point about being able to connect while on the move ie. while distracted/multi-tasking.
rough outline of our convos:

hey ___ howas today?
Hi
Good
didju go for ur seminar in the end?
Yup
Brunch tmr?
sure(: when and where?
Meet at city hall mrt
11am
Thinking of going ___ after tt
Wanna go?
what's it like? wonder if it's my type of show
It's not bad
My bro went
I gtg cya
.
.
.
:(