Face it. Email is already more important than phone for many of us. Voice mail hell should refer to more than just byzantine voice mail systems. Your own voice mail sucks because it is sequential. You have to listen to the whole message to find out if anything important is said in the last 2 seconds. So, there you are, listening to long voice mails and hating every minute of it.
Enter email. We all get it (along with way too much spam) and sometimes it can be a pain to keep up with it. But, it's so much easier to quickly glance through your new email and see who it's from and the subject header. You can scan most emails very fast. Now you are cool. You can answer the ones you want in the order of your priority on your own schedule. No phone tag.
What's keeping this superior form of communication from really dominating is that it can be hard to get your email or find out that you have an important email when you are away from your computer. Enter 24/7 email access via a cell phone/pda like the Sidekick, Tungsten W, Treo 270 or 300, Blackberry or, my secret amor, the Sony Ericsson P800 (which is ruled out for me because of no QWERTY keyboard).
Voila! You get a single vibrate or chime or ring when you get an email. I set my main email account to forward my email to my Sidekick if the sender is in my address book or the name of my product is mentioned in the subject line. Very effective! I know that when I get an email on my SK, it's worth receiving. And, since it updates constantly - I don't have to check mail, I find out about emails as soon as they come in. Then if I want to respond immediately, I do. I email or call if need be. I tell you, it's the only way to fly!