In the old days friends and family annoyed us by not writing. Now they can annoy us by not phoning, not emailing and not texting. Technology isolates and snubs as much as it connects. From The Times:

For a few days I thought I was going deaf. Then I concluded that it must be a problem with my mobile phone. Why else would I keep getting so many missed-call messages? Why else would frustrated callers keep leaving me voicemails and apologise for having missed me again?

Then I realised what was happening: I was the victim of the latest trend in Los Angeles: “antisocial networking”. In other words: people wanting to give the illusion of staying in touch - while going to great lengths to eliminate the risk of any actual interaction taking place.

It's a symptom, I like to think, of a maxed-out population. After MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and a zillion other ways of remaining interminably connected with everyone you've ever met since birth, people just can't take it any more. They want peace. They want isolation. They want time alone to break wind and feel depressed about the economy. And so the very same software engineers who once brought us closer are now working on new ways to keep us apart.

Hence all those missed-call messages. Turns out they're made possible by a service called Slydial, launched a week ago and already proving to be hugely popular. To make it work, you call a freephone number (it only works in the US), listen to an advertisement, then enter the digits of the person you don't want to reach. It puts you straight through to their voicemail while delivering a missed-call message to their phone, thus creating the illusion that you at least made the effort to have a conversation. As ingenious as this is, however, I can see problems. For example: I used the service on Sunday to return a call from a friend I didn't much feel like talking to. Five minutes later, I received a text message. “Hey, did you just Slydial me?” it said.

Slydial is a rather convoluted form of “antisocial networking”. I can’t imagine wanting somebody to think that I had called them when I hadn’t. However, I have made use of Call Return – if I’m busy or feeling anti-social, I sometimes let the answerphone take the call, and then, if nobody leaves a message, dial 1471 to see who has called.

When you dial 1471, it gives the number of the last person to call you, unless that person has withheld his number by dialling 141 – a pervert’s charter if ever there was one. You may then press 3 to return the call. A telephone version of Russian roulette is to dial 1471-3 all in one go. Then, inevitably, you get through to somebody you have been avoiding for good reason.