I think that could work in an environment where everything could be cleanly laid out and understood in advance, without room for error or confusion or misalignm

I think that could work in an environment where everything could be cleanly laid out and understood in advance, without room for error or confusion or misalignment. I think it is a lot easier to burn through misunderstandings with face to face or otherwise synchronous speech. Detailed note taking is a good remedy for the whole "words only last as long as your throat cords vibrate" thing. Although now that I think about it we're probably pretty close to agreeing, I'm really just pointing out the value of regular old talking as a good escape for when text based communications slow down or fail but implicitly I'm assuming a world where the default is text.. which is what it sounds like you'd prefer.