My wife and I were talking on our cell phones today and we both happened to be tuned to NPR. I noticed that I heard her radio a split second after mine. She said hers was first though, and mine was later. Then I realized that the digital cell network was causing a delay between us. It happens all the time, but unless you notice a radio or something like I did, you’d never know it.
So the point is that on digital cell phones, a live conversation is an impossibility. I’m never talking live to my wife; I’m talking to a voice recording, a digital reproduction of her words a split second later. We never actually speak with each other directly.
A little weird if you think about it.