Someone mentioned how using a “rotary phone” was a sign of their age earlier this evening.
That got me thinking.
When I was growing up my mother didn’t even have a phone in her house. If she needed to make a phone call she’d go to a phone box.
My grandparents on the other hand did have a phone, but it didn’t have a dial. You had to crank the phone’s dynamo before you made a call and then speak to the operator.
When they upgraded the local exchange and the number got longer (it had been town name followed by 3 digits!) the old phone was consigned to a cupboard full of junk. It stayed there for a few years until I was messing around with electronics and anything else that had any form of cabling. So naturally I had to dismember the phone to see how it all worked (which I probably failed to achieve, though it did keep me busy for a couple of hours).
Flash forward nearly 30 years.
The phone in my pocket is more powerful than a lot of desktop computers were a few short years ago. I do have a landline, but I rarely use it.
Our office uses VOIP to handle all our calls, both inbound and outbound.
The very concept of having to crank up a device to actually make a phonecall is probably so foreign to some people now that they might think I’m either mad or really really really old if I mentioned it.
And can you even remember the last time you saw a public phone box?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0f8c7983-917f-4f22-8244-8209f1a98cbe)
Michele
That post really resonates. Phones have become so ubiquitous we hardly think about them any more. They’ve become the invisible layer between us and the people we communicate with on a daily basis.
If you turn it on its head and try to imagine life without its convenience it’s a daunting prospect.
But little by little I also think that these powerhouses in our pockets have not only brought us untold benefits, but also begun to shape our lives in ways we couldn’t have imagined.
I just wrote a little piece on how Google has now mapped our WiFi routers (without telling us) in order, so they say, to make mapping on the next generation of smartphones more accurate.
That may ultimately be a good thing, but it’s also become clear that, as you point out, our phones are so much more than merely means to talk. I for one would hate to contemplate a life without mine.
Cheers
Ralph
http://ennclick.com
Ralph
Personally I prefer email, but I now check that a lot on my phone 🙂
Michele
Hi,your story resonates with me and it is hard to credit how far we have come with communication devices.
I often thought that if you had told some one 25 years ago that you could stand in the middle of a field in twenty five years time and speak with some one and see some one in an other country with a small device that would fit in your pocket they would have thought that you were mad!!
Have enjoyed the blog and will be back to read more…
Tom S