This paper enquires into the nature of the act of communication between two or more persons. It proposes that such acts are best conceived of as moral, as related to the performative consequences of the acts in question. Given this, the paper then asks what applicability phrases like 'overload' might have, and whether quantitative techniques have a role other than as a heuristic in understanding and designing tools for the control of communication overload between people. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.