I just discovered Pinger. It's a service that lets you send people voice mail messages without actually calling them. So it's a kind of cross-breed between voice mail and text messaging, I suppose.

The great thing about it is you can leave someone a brief message if you don't have time for a full-blown conversation. Plus, you can express yourself as well as ever, rather than relying on terrible abbreviations and the 20th century's emoticons.

Of course, the bad thing about it is that it opens us up to the possibility that we'll just be using voice mail to avoid talking to the people whom we call friends.

Ultimately, whether any new technology is humanizing or alienating depends on how we use it, and on the individual user. I think Pinger is a great service, but I think I'll also have to be careful to only use its powers for good.