There's a germ of a good idea in there, BUT

[oursin]

Yes, maybe it's a good idea to think about contacting somebody/ies you've been out of touch with for a while - but Y O Y -

Y O Y

- would spontaneously phoning them, out of the blue, in the expectation of a nice catch-up chat be the best way to do this thing, or, as has been posited,

positively revolutionary?

Huh?

Do we not think it interesting, my dearios, that now there are all these methods of asynchronous communication, so that we are not interrupted in whatever we are doing in order to pick up the phone in order to address whatever is coming dowm the line at us, they have so much superseded that form of communication that it is regarded by the current generation with fear and trembling, as well as those of us of earlier generations who fell upon these things with glad cries of welcome? Could it be - I'm just running this up the flagpole here - that they suit people better?

You know, like not having people turn up on your front doorstep in the happy anticipation of being invited in for a totally spontaneous cup of tea.

(A situation for which one needs Hector with his most rat-in-the-wainscotting expression to take their card and inform them that Her Ladyship is Not At Home.)

I believe it has been mooted that perchance there is some hearking back to those days when people were always popping in and out of each other's houses - which give me leave to doubt - sure, there were civilities exchanged while hanging out the washing in the back garden, or during encounters at the corner shop, but I think people who just popped in and disturbed the domestic routine would not necessarily be terribly well-regarded.

I also had a thought here, which somehow seems to be related, that the people who moan on about the isolated anomie of This Yere Modern Generation, are not those same people who one finds beleagured by the stresses of working in open plan offices with intrusive and uncongenial workmates... And the latter phenomenon may have something to do with issues around boundaries.