In a world of tweets and texts, email and instant messaging, are we communicating any better?
Or is modern technology making us lazy about actually talking to each other, with damaging effects on both business and society?
This was the issue that the Today programme guest editor Sir Victor Blank asked me to investigate. Having only had a brief email explaining what he wanted, I was still rather unclear about his thesis - until I got him on the phone for a chat. Which sort of made his point...
"Technology is a massive aid to communication," he told me, "but if it takes away regular face-to-face or direct conversations, then you lose something of the softer edges."
Sir Victor, the former chairman of Lloyds TSB, seemed particularly concerned about the impact that modern methods were having in the business world, with executives firing off emails in anger, and making deals they might later regret, rather than seeing the whites of the eyes of their counterparts in face-to-face negotiations.
That was a concern shared by one person Sir Victor suggested as a possible interviewee. The former Times editor Lord Rees-Mogg told me that if he were in the newspaper business today he would of course use the most modern methods. But he felt that many people could become addicted to email and social networking. "I do notice that emails are often fired off without any real consideration - they're also much ruder than more considered communications, so I think they're inferior.