Is Technology Making us Rude?

It wasn't so long ago that, in order to have a conversation with someone you had to do it face to face or over the phone. It was easy to interpret inflection and get immediate reactions. Technology has changed all of that.

A friend just told me about a business situation where someone wanted her to do some freelance work for them. They made contact over email and showed interest, my friend responded and said that she was interested as well and she gave a price quote. And that was the end of it, she never heard a thing back.

If this was a telephone conversation, the other person probably would have said something along the lines of "I'm afraid that might be a bit out of our price range" and they could have negotiated. Chances are that the perspective client just moved on to their second choice, but had it been a live, real time conversation, at least my friend would have known why she lost the job.

A huge pet peeve of mine is when you're having an instant message chat conversation with someone and they just sign off. No "I have to go", no "talk to you later". Just, conversation over. To me, it's the equivalent of having a face to face conversation with someone and the other person just suddenly turning around and walking away.

So what do you think, is technology making us more rude?