Thanks for Not Calling: A Digital Etiquette Column Is a Disconnect for Readers

2:41 p.m. | Updated
When I called Nick Bilton â€" after an initial e-mail exchange - I didn't reach him right away.

One thing was certain: I was not about to leave a voice mail message. After all, that was the topic of my call â€" the huge reader response to his Disruptions column in which he wrote about the etiquette of communicating in the totally wired era. Voice mail is something to be avoided at all costs.

Mr. Bilton started his column with this:

Some people are so rude. Really, who sends an e-mail or text message that just says “Thank you”? Who leaves a voice mail message when you don't answer, rather than texting you? Who asks for a fact easily found on Google?

Don't these people realize that they're wasting your time?

Of course, some people might think me the rude one for not appreciating life's little courtesies. But many social norms just don't make sense to people drowning in digital communication.

Mr. Bilton's column generated more than 500 comments, many of them disgusted with what they saw as his dismissiveness and bad manners. The column has also generated stories and commentary from many media outlets including The Atlantic Wire and The Globe and Mail. He followed up in the Bits blog on Tuesday, addressing specific reader complaints.

It includes an explanation of why he talks to his mother mostly on Twitter â€" and not even in direct messages. I doubt that the explanation will satisfy many of the parents among Times readers who hope for a more personal connection with their offspring.

One reader who wrote to me directly, Ellen D. Murphy of Portland, Me., expressed her displeasure memorably:

While I applaud The Times's apparent effort to reach out to children, you go too far when you give them a platform on your pages to express their opinions, which have all the hallmarks of immaturity and gracelessness of their age group. I refer to yesterday's column by Nick Bilton, entitled “Disruptions: Digital Era Redefining Etiquette,” which I first thought was a clever satire and then came to realize was an expression of Mr. (should I call him that?) Bilton's actual way of conducting himself. I feel sorry for his parents - his father, whose dozen voice mails he ignores, and his mother, who he insists communicate with him only by Twitter. This is a sociopath - and you employ him?

I was left with a sincere feeling of gratitude that, at age 62, I will be dead by the time Mr. Bilton and his age cohort will be running things - and the realization that they will probably smother me with a pillow should I have the bad manners (ahem) to survive and, inefficiently, take up space in their sleek, cold, 140-character world.

I asked Mr. Bilton and his editor, Glenn Kramon, about the strong reaction.

“Readers were able to say to me what they'd like to say to their children or grandchildren â€" that we're rude and insolent,” Mr. Bilton said.

He added, “Fine, I'll be the punching bag for a generation.”

Mr. Bilton, 36, is no kid, and he notes that he “can sit on either side of the fence,” digitally speaking. And if he had the column to do over again, he told me that he would have made the point that he does express gratitude, but not with a perfunctory e-mail.

“I still write handwritten thank-you cards,” he said, “and I think that is very special.”

He said he “learned a lesson” from the experience â€" that “our readers tend to go to extremes” when they react to a subject, and he might have tried harder to explain what he did and didn't really mean.

Mr. Kramon told me that he knew from the start that reaction would be negative but he believed â€" and still does believe â€" that the topic was worth exploring.

“Nick is raising issues that all of us are dealing with and doing it in a provocative way,” Mr. Kramon said.

As for the furor, there's no question, Mr. Kramon said, that “our audience was appalled.”

That reflects what he sees as a societal disconnect â€" and “Nick is voicing the other side of the disconnect in rather harsh terms. But maybe it helps people understand” how some members of the digital generation think and act.

And in other Times and tech-related commentary, the author Jeff Jarvis offered this tough criticism of a front-page article on Wednesday about Google and privacy violations, calling it “techno-panicky” and overplayed.  Mr. Jarvis wrote a book entitled “What Would Google Do?”  He is an unabashed admirer of the company and owns Google stock.