You're being cynical and it seems you take a quite extremist stance. My impression is you're blind to the value of ephemeral, low-ceremony discussion. Just bounce an idea of someone else and see what comes back. Sharing fews, helping each other learn, etc.
Not everything needs to be recorded, in fact I'm very happy that most discussions aren't.
Spare me the crap. I've seen many company wikis full of stuff that nobody ever looks up, because it's mostly irrelevant, outdated, or plain wrong content.
The value of discussions mostly isn't in the things that can be recorded or searched later, but in the effort the participants put into it.
As stated before, this is up to a certain threshold. One or a few low-friction discussions per day can be very fine. It shouldn't take up the biggest part of your day's focus time.
He does have a point though. Easily "recordable" communication is bad for office politics.
Remember that old advice to email the boss with a summary of what he told you to do verbally - asking for confirmation that you understood it right as a cover - to cover your ass?
I tend to favor calls with people who prefer calls, and text with people who prefer text. But if it starts getting abused, the situation becomes different.
I don't mind agreeing to a bare zero-effort "hi, can we go on a call?" from time to time. And I give a lot of leeway to juniors and new hires, bending over backwards more than I probably should. But if it becomes a habit you can bet I'll start delaying my responses until the other party starts putting some upfront effort.
I usually expect mutual respect. Helping each other as fellow professionals working towards the same (company) goal, is one thing. Asking for hand-holding, or expecting zero-effort to be repaid with non-zero effort, is a completely different thing.
If someone asks another to go out of their way to ignore their other responsibilities and give you their undivided attention right now in a way that's uncomfortable to them, then it's only fair for this to be a two-way street. At some point, maybe not now, maybe not soon, but at some point, some sort of reciprocation is expected if this trend continues.
My previous comment was mostly just me ranting of places where that reciprocation wasn't the case because people only ever expect things to be done in the way that's comfortable for them specifically; which in my bubble, it has been mostly with the "only-calls" people, unable to hold any semblance of conversation over text. (EDIT: The actual topic might not be the same, but the mood definitely came from there.)
A pair programming session where we're both doing something, bouncing ideas, you check stuff on your end while I also check stuff here on my end, okay, that's a good thing.
But if it's just me remote-controlling that other person with my voice, I can't call that productive, and I'd rather play that pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game while also working on my current task.
In my bubble, when people preferred only-calls it was usually also the case that they put almost zero effort when asking for help and just didn't want to bother spending literally 2 additional seconds to take a screenshot.
I can rant for even longer, for example how those same people (again, in my experience so far) prefer to go to the office to use a whiteboard in the name of efficiency, and somehow aren't bothered by the fact that you can't Ctrl+Z, that you can't move stuff around, that you can't rotate stuff, that you block the view while modifying, etc. And if you say that a few 90 EUR digital tablets would actually be more efficient, they say they can't afford it, but at the same time the managers travel (flights+hotels+transportation) to several countries in person to introduce themselves to their teams in person because this is actually more efficient.
And the people who prefer calls, and know that will be requesting calls frequently, and sharing screen frequently, and talking about stuff in their screen frequently, don't even purchase a cheap drawing tablet to make it easier for them to explain stuff graphically.
So yeah, take that as additional context for my rant.
TL;DR: If you prefer calls, I will tend to use calls with you until you abuse this, and this abuse usually happens eventually if I stay in a company long enough (fortunately not always).
Oh funny one. I have atm a part time contract where I go to the office twice per week.
I decided with a coworker today that we'll go to the office an extra day tomorrow because we'd rather do that than sit for a couple hours with headphones in our ears.
On our own, no management involved.
When it makes sense to talk, I can talk. Most of the time, it doesn't.
Not everything needs to be recorded, in fact I'm very happy that most discussions aren't. Spare me the crap. I've seen many company wikis full of stuff that nobody ever looks up, because it's mostly irrelevant, outdated, or plain wrong content.
The value of discussions mostly isn't in the things that can be recorded or searched later, but in the effort the participants put into it.
As stated before, this is up to a certain threshold. One or a few low-friction discussions per day can be very fine. It shouldn't take up the biggest part of your day's focus time.