A conversation with a friend led to the question of "are there rules for when one can call someone?" Of course there are not, unless we are dealing with restrictive orders. But in today's living, where the modes of communication range from making phone calls, sending text messages, leaving Facebook posts, to sending instant-messages, is there a respectable convention?
No matter how technology progresses, the modes of communication can be categorized on a spectrum of attention-seeking. Off at the highest end is calling on the phone or video-calling on Skype; it's hard to multi-task while doing that. Off to the other end of the spectrum are methods like sending emails (suppose the recipient checks email consistently), leaving Facebook posts, or even sending text messages. For these, at the moment the information is passed on, the recipient can choose whether or not to put his or her attention onto it. He or she also chooses to reply at a moment of convenience. In-between is sending instant-messages. While the recipient can choose to pay attention and response at his or her discretion, there is a modest amount of attention beheld, for a response is expected soon; otherwise, it turns into relaying messages back-and-forth.
The most crucial component of a piece of information that dictates its communication method is its urgency. If it's an urgent information, it justifies seeking the immediate attention of the other. Here's an illustration. Suppose you're meeting a friend at 12:00. If you realize at that day 11:50 that you can't make it today, the best bet is to call, lest the friend is already on his or her way. This is an urgent message, and that justifies seeking the attention of the friend, regardless what the friend was doing at the time. Now suppose it's one week before the scheduled meeting, and it needs to be rescheduled. All of the forms of communication are acceptable, but methods toward the bottom of the attention-seeking spectrum are most appropriate. These non-attention-seeking methods will be able to convey the necessary information in time to serve its purpose (to schedule a new meeting time in the upcoming week).
Of course, there is nothing inherently "wrong" with calling the friend one week in advance purely to say that the meeting needs to be canceled. Instead, it's a probabilistic inconvenience. Go back to the moment one week before the scheduled meeting. The friend may be idle at the moment you call, in which case there's no real detraction from calling. However, what if the friend is really busy at the time, such that taking the non-urgent call disturbs his or her actions? Let's use the concept of utility, and specifically, the mutual utility of having the information successfully communicated, and the change in personal utility from picking up this information in the particular method. In the disturbed case, the friend's personal utility decreased due to the disturbance, but no mutual utility is gained from having the information successfully conveyed instantly. This wouldn't be true in an urgent situation, where if the information isn't successfully conveyed within time, the mutual utility plummets. Back to the case though, there can be no gain from using the attention-seeking communication method, given that the probability of non-attention-seeking methods getting the information across successfully is almost certain. Instead, regardless of what the probability that the friend is super busy at the time, the total change in combined utility will be non-positive. It could be unchanged, but it can decrease; by no way will it increase.
That's why making a non-urgent phone or video call is inefficient for both parties. If the information to-be-conveyed truly is not urgent, there are no benefits from utilizing the attention-seeking method of communication. Of course, some can argue for the increased heartfelt happiness as a result of those more intimate communication methods. Well, here we are assuming that there are no such effects. Amorous environments are of another realm, because when one tries to quantify love, well, we lose quantifiable results.
