all you've got to do is talk naturally

Recently I've been paying closer attention to how skilled many people are at leaving voicemail messages. We've gotten pretty good at leaving clear, concise messages that actually convey useful information before the time-out beeper cuts us off.

Of course, I'm old enough to remember when some of my friends were intimidated by message machines and got clammy and stammered through a message....or worse, they got stage fright and hung up without leaving a message at all.

But those days are over. The next time you're in a public place, just listen. You'll hear people on cell phones everywhere, and many of these smooth talkers aren't having a two-way conversation -- they're just leaving messages. There's no human at the other end. They might even prefer it that way.

As a culture, we've mastered the art of sounding natural -- even downright warm, sincere, or even enthusiastic -- when we talk to machines. (And increasingly, machines are sounding more natural when they talk to us, too.)

How did we evolve to leaving these spontaneous soundbites for other people? Maybe it's trial by error, from being cut off by the beep too many times... but I also think we've finessed our intonation from listening to radio, cable news, and other media without really thinking about it...a modern instinct versus a primitive one.