E.T. Phone Home

I was cleaning my daughter’s room after her Spring Break visit and found that she had pulled A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court from the shelf in our library.  It caused my mind wander a lot in the ensuing weeks.  I keep thinking back to my simple retro home life growing up and my lean college years.  I flashed to the old “when I was young” jokes:  “When I was young we used to walk to school . . . ten miles . . . uphill. . . in the snow . . . without boots . . . fighting off the dinosaurs. . . with a sling-shot.”  I wish our children could go back in time to see what our lives were like.   Technology has spiraled so quickly, revolutionizing the way we live; it is sad that it is not better appreciated by this younger generation.  Many older consumers—those who are really in a position to understand how far we have come—are reluctant to embrace today’s newest offerings.  My own mother, for example, will not use email or learn to browse the Internet.  (Kudos to my mother-in-law, however, who emailed me while I was writing this to discuss another of my blogs that she had just read online!)  Younger consumers, on the other hand, were born with silicon spoons in their mouths.  The delight that should accompany their treasure trove of high tech riches is missed on them.   They want ever more apps, crisper graphics, better ring-tones, and more song tracks.  Do they think this stuff just grows on trees?

High tech in the 60’s was exemplified by Dick Tracy comics. Tracy’s watch was a 2-way radio—they did not even have the foresight to call it a phone.  “This is Dick Tracy calling Go-Go-Gomez.  Calling Go-Go-Gomez.” Secret agent Maxwell Smart had a phone in his shoe and we thought that was more preposterous than forward thinking.   In the real word, we anticipated the promise that someday we would have “television phones,” allowing us to talk to another person through a television screen, seeing a live view (dressed from the waist up, no doubt) of our counterpart while we conversed.  Although we could imagine the functionality, we did not believe that such a thing would happen in our lifetimes.  Nor did we imagine that such technology would be as miniaturized as Tracy’s watch, as the 60s paradigm for technology was actually bigger and not smaller.  Remember the huge television tubes, the room-sized IBM computers, huge stereo speakers?  It is mind-boggling to consider through a 1969 lens, like the one through which I watched a grainy image of man walking on the moon, at how much power we now carry in our pockets.  My iphone actually cost less than my first trig-function calculator in unadjusted dollars, and it talks to satellites!

The telephone is an interesting object against which to benchmark technological growth.  I am in my early fifties.  Until about forty years ago, in the 70s, there was no digital technology in telephones.  A largely mechanical unit with a rotary dial (which created a series of clicks) sent point-to-point messages across landlines, which are nothing more than common twisted-pair cables.  Technologically speaking, it is comparable to two cans and a string.  It was a big deal in my family when digital service became available, enabling an upgrade to push-button phones.  I remember being fascinated with the dissonant tones assigned to the various buttons.  I used to translate the tones into famous classical signatures.  If one of my friends had to be called to the phone by a parent, they were likely to pick up to the familiar duh-duh-duh-daah of Beethoven’s Fifth.   I remember a conversation with my father, who worked in the electronics industry, describing how the tones of the buttons potentially could be used to send signals.  It was way beyond my comprehension, however, to imagine why I would send signals on my phone while I was talking to my friend. 

During my college years there were a lot of enhancements to long distance service, something that used to be prohibitively expensive.  Networks began to emerge that integrated with local service in order to provide lost-cost communication across a greater distance.   There was a time when long distance across the country was cheaper per minute than in-state long distance because it was supported by different types of carriers.  I remember when the massive mega-monopoly AT&T was fragmented by the government in order to promote competition.  When consumers began to have choices of long-distance carrier, I remember thinking that this was not progress at all.  We were being forced to manage more relationships, dial additional access codes, and pay bills to more parties.  I took phone service for granted; I just wanted to pick up the phone and have my dial tone take me where I wanted to be.  Little did I understand how these infrastructure years were laying the groundwork for the future.  By my mid-to-late twenties, telephone access was virtually global and long distance became a fraction of the cost.

At the same time, the new digital telephones were not just for talking any more.  The idea of “communication” was quickly becoming less about our personal conversations and more about moving data.  In my first job out of graduate school, I was given a “portable” computer.  It was larger than and twice as heavy as the rolling suitcase that I carry on planes with me today.  What was remarkable, however, was that I could jam my home telephone receiver into its hind quarter and “upload” data sets into the company’s mainframe.  I began to realize the promise of those tones my father had told me about.  Within a few years, those computers got lighter and smaller; the handset paradigm of phone communication was replaced by simple RJ11 plugs.  It was a revelation to use digital communication to FAX contracts from coast to coast.  This was an incredible boon to the business world, allowing us to bypass the mail service by hitching a ride on the telephone highway, thus compressing more work into a business cycle.

In the nineties, the power of computers and phone lines merged.  Computers evolved to full-screen graphic interfaces, allowing us to type and edit our thoughts on the screen and then ship them off in electronic packets over a digital network.  Thus was the start of asynchronous communication—a concept that not only replaced phone conversations, but also reduced the need for frequent staff meetings.  We learned that we could polish an important idea in the privacy of our cubicles rather than confronting dissention or awkward meeting dynamics.  Others discovered the ease with which you could dress down a workmate when you did not have to look at their face.   Be careful, though, not to hit “Send to All” or to put on an email anything you wouldn’t want your boss or your mother to see.

At the same time, telephones continued to evolve.  One year for my birthday, my husband bought me a “carphone”—an awkward contraption that came in a bag and slid under the driver’s seat, tethered to the car lighter and a remarkably un-evolved handpiece.  The technology made me available to the office and the kids’ daycare while I was stuck in commuter traffic for two hours each day.

By the year 2000 my mobile phone and my computer were both small enough to fit in my shoulder bag.  Within a few years, each member of our household had his own phone and his own computer, although we no longer called them phones—they were now “cells”.  I honestly do not know when texting became a feature, as I used my phone purely as a phone for far too long, only upgrading from a relic flip-phone to an iphone about 6 months ago.   I must have been abducted by aliens, because all of a sudden phones were electronic appliances, packing smart chips that made them as functionally robust as computers.  Today, I use my iphone as frequently as my laptop to access the Internet.

Back in the old days, when the dinosaurs still roamed, we had a single phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen with an extension at my parents’ bedside.  Calls were not allowed during dinner time.  When the phone rang, my father screened the caller, usually embarrassing me in the process by insisting that the caller identify himself and then engaging in parent banter.  Once on the phone, I had a ten minute limit; every call tied up the single-purpose line from potential business calls or family emergencies.  Obnoxious though it seemed, we learned manners, respect, decorum, and common courtesy. 

My children, and certainly other people’s kids too, have a different sensibility about phones.  They cannot eat a meal or take out the trash or go to the bathroom without their phones.   There is a constant patter of communication taking place between them and their network of friends—updating their movements, broadcasting the lameness of their parents, and keeping track of who is hooking up with whom.  Strangely, the one thing they do not do on their phones is talk.  When I attempt to call my daughter at college, I usually receive a text message while her phone is ringing.  “Text me,” she says, “I am too busy to talk.”

Is this progress?

Tomorrow's blog:  Suits Me Fine