The problem with the phone is the lack of facial cues and body language with which to make meaning and interpretation of the other person's state and communication. Same with any non face-to-face communication.
It's one reason why psychopaths and sociopaths and fake personas have been able to ascend so far so quickly. We are lacking the unconsious cues that trigger our survival defence mechanisms, the behaviors that cause the hairs on the back of our necks to stand up and alerts our conscious mind to the fact that something does not add up here.
Has anyone else noticed that since the (if not completely fake, over-hyped) Covid pandemic many if not most stores have put up barriers between customers and check out clerks? Perhaps like the (mostly worthless) Covid masks, meant to distance and alienate people from each other?
After all, "divide and conquer" is probably the oldest strategy in the books that reviled rulers use to keep their subjects from getting together in solidarity and overthrowing the whole rotten system.
Interesting you bring that up. I have noticed within the last week, some businesses I have been to throughout the panic era have put up plexiglass partitions just recently.
I think the book "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker brought home to me how important it is to be able to get those intuitions in the first place, and then to be alert to them and to trust them. I've become a lot more trusting of my intuitions as a result, and of the need to have direct 'real' data on which to make them.
Perhaps a part of their (our psychotic/demonic controllers) agenda all along with the "Internet" and various cell phone devices; it allows them to flourish and control people more effectively.
There are hundreds of people arrested and now are being forgotten in jail for the "crime" of attending, for the most part a peaceful protest rally in Washington. Many of those people that were identified and arrested was through their smart phones/cell phones.
I miss seeing my daughter but getting a phone call is always nice as she lives over 300 miles away, the problem is, she doesn't call, she texts and I hate that, which Ive told her many times. I absolutely hate texts and cell phones, mine stays in a faraday bag unless I need it on the road, which is rare. Kids today think texting is fine but it's not, it's destructive to the human connection and we've really lost that. I have had a landline my entire life, Im 72 so its been along time. If cell phones went away tomorrow Id cheer. Thanks for your post Celia, it made me think.
I would venture that's why writers hate texting: it's like the difference between a two year old babbling (texting) and a post-doc writing a thesis. If one is proficient at the latter who wants to lapse back into the former?
Not sure about that. They're two different writing styles requiring two different skill sets. There would be considerable skill involved, for example, in communicating the essence of a post-doc thesis clearly in a short text - perhaps not unlike the skill required to write good headlines for newspaper stories? On the other hand, a lot of post-doc theses are full of nothing but BS and nonsense!
The Rings of Alienation: My friend and I yesterday were mutual casualties of texting. He thought I was lecturing him. I felt he was overreacting. Had we been in the same room, all that could have been avoided and in hindsight made me wish that instead we'd been talking on the phone.
The electronic age has created a longing that shows up as dependence on dopamine hits from phones and screens. A cycle of dissatisfaction as hearts and souls are excluded from the circuit.
I miss letters. The energy conveyed by hand writing. Beautiful deliberate cursive or cryptic scribble. My best friend in NY was left-handed and I remember the funny angle of her cursive, how it amplified her sense of humor.
I cherish notes from my mother. Sometimes the stain of a teardrop changes the meaning of all the words. Hearts can’t really communicate the same way through phones.
We miss so much when we reduce communication to data.
And you're so right, the hand writing…I am just so disassociated from my legible hand writing. I see the trauma levels in my hand writing and I wish I could take a course in penmanship.
Yes! My mom always sent me letters in bright yellow envelopes and when she died (1999) …that was one of so many losses, never seeing those yellow envelopes in my mailbox ever again.
I never owned a cellphone or any wireless device. I always had a landline. When I don't want calls I take the plug out so the phone won't ring. I have always done that. I hate getting phone-calls when I'm busy creating or relaxing. So it's my decision when I want to be 'disturbed' by outsiders. None of my children have a cellphone (and they even have cellphone-less friends) and my husband has one for work but it's switched off 90% of time. Consciously choosing to go 'wired' is a solution and I wish more attention could be given to people who live like this as an inspiration to others.
I am hostile to cell phones and smart phones in general. Let me count a few of the ways.
° They emit powerful microwaves which are very toxic to the body. The ratio of temporal lobe brain cancer now mimic the 9 to 1 ratio of handedness.
° They are Deep State surveillance devices far worse than Orwell’s ubiquitous telescreens of 1984.
° They are addicting - quite literally, especially for children.
° They are the first step to the metaverse where our malevolent overlords convince us to live in a simulation they have constructed.
° In summary they are demonic.
I live in a somewhat rural part of Mexico. When I bought my building lot 10 years ago, there was a telephone stuck in the middle of it. I assumed that I could get a real house phone. Turns out that the line just skipped over my little town and there is nothing I can do about it.
Here is my personal cell phone strategy: It is always on airplane mode. When I am away from my laptop (out in the world) I will use my phone only to make a necessary call. Then it goes right back on airplane mode. If I am at my house, I check for texts on my laptop, where my friends and family know to 'text' my proton email account. It works great. They all know I am not immediately available. Texting me is more like using an answering machine. It did take a long time for family to not be offended when there was no immediate response. But my life improved immensely with this strategy, as I am in control of when I enter the realm.
My grandmother lived to be a 100, which spanned the 20th Century. I once asked what she thought was the most seminal technology that affected her life, thinking she would answer horseless carriages becoming automobiles or TV. Without hesitation she said ☎️
I can understand that. Telephones were rare before 1900 and postal services were either unavailable or prohibitively expensive before about 1840. Before that, the only way of contacting friends and loved ones was by going to visit them. If they travelled overseas, in most cases you had no way of knowing whether they were still alive unless and until they came back. Imagine that!
When I was 5 (six decades ago) my mom would put me on the Greyhound and send me off to visit nan for the week end a couple of hours away all by myself! Imagine that!! 😉
Yes, I remember those days, too. It was a different reality, a different world - in some ways better, in some ways not. Your Greyhound adventures must have been quite character building!
I should've qualified the context because indeed I was asking about the most positive change. She didn't live long enough to see us all carrying computers in our pockets.
I have a 20-year old Nokia and use it as little as possible, and rarely carry it with me. I don't like being interrupted by a ring-tone; but a person dropping in at the house is o.k. I don't think I've ever phoned anybody just to 'have a chat' (well, maybe my mother when she was alive). I prefer email, or a text, and then I have time to consider how to reply.
This is just my unprofessional opinion. (I have no advanced degree in psychology.) Introverts don't talk much but when they do their words have meaning. They truly want to connect with their listener so they don't use language cheaply. The purpose of speaking for them is to convey and receive information.
Extroverts talk to think out loud because their brain is not wired to think internally "in their heads." Speaking for extroverts is a form of grooming. They don't use it to convey information but to put people at ease. Thus their propensity for inane "small talk."
When the two get together (extroverts and introverts) frustration and misunderstanding often result. The former ( extroverts) chatting the latter (introverts) seeking meaning and information.
Thank you for replying. For an "unprofessional opinion" that reads pretty good to me. I confess to being a fairly extreme introvert. And we live in an extrovert society, which I find exhausting. As an artist/craftsperson I work alone. I'm hopeless at organising others; I couldn't organise the proverbial piss-up in a brewery. But I make stuff, which takes 100s of hours of focus and concentration - which I doubt an extrovert could manage.
I agree, it's two differing approaches. I recharge my batteries in solitude; extroverts in a crowd. Fortunately I'm married to a writer & introvert - and that's why we get on so well. 😊
I, on the other hand, positively loathe someone just 'dropping by' on the 'off chance' when I might be in the middle of something quite important and absorbing. These days I can't see why anyone would when they can forewarn you. For the record I'm an artist who might be classed as extrovert, but introvert when in work mode.
I quite like being interrupted by someone dropping by, it's an excuse to stop and take a break. At least they've made an effort to visit personally; it's pretty rare anyway. I have an extrovert side and like being 'on stage' giving poetry recitals but in work mode, I'm in a total introvert space - otherwise accidents can happen when using powerful machinery.
I'm interested in knowing how you managed to hang on to your 20 year old Nokia. I was forced out of mine 2 years ago when the G-tower upgrades started coming on line. Mine was a 3G and to my knowledge there are no more working 3G towers and a 3G cell phone will not work on the 5G towers.
I live in Portugal, and 3G is everywhere here (as is 4G which most people are on, and now 5G is appearing in cities. I live deep in the countryside). Best regards, Josh.
Similar to the advent of television and air conditioning, the mobile phone has probably done exceedingly more damage dividing us socially - at least in the realm of real relationship, person to person.
I recall the home phone, back in the day, when you never knew who might answer on the other end and often had a few minutes to catch up before the phone went to the intended party. (Remember party lines?) And before answering machines and caller id, extra long cords, busy signals and/or just letting it ring while we ate a meal together as a family. We all managed to live without phones attached to our bodies. I miss that.
Since I won't conduct conversations by text, I have lost contact with nearly everyone. Family and close friends, who have been told I prefer hearing a voice, if only for a few minutes, and know I will not respond in any detail by text, insist on this as their only means of communication. (To call them is to get their voicemail and I don't leave random "hello, miss you" messages anymore - that only makes it worse.) Without the ability to hear vocal cues, or see a wink in the moment, there have been too many misunderstandings through email and text. How much time have I wasted trying to define emoticons! And there aren't any books on etiquette, like when am I expected to reply when there's no RSVP? Must I join in the canned and now new "loved" such and such copied group messages? And then there's the pain and time spent wondering why there was no response to a "how are you" text or to be left hanging in text oblivion at the end of a brief communique.
Even in social spaces, people are glued to their screens, while life is happening all around them. It's a joy to find someone able to hold a conversation in person, without their phone taking priority.
Maybe it's me, idk. But I miss the connections, when you knew your friends so well that a phone call only put icing on the cake. I suppose memories are what fuel me these days....and look forward to what God has planned beyond this life. So I save the phone for an emergency whilst learning to accept things as they are, enjoying life alone, at my own speed.
Not in the least a bummer. I for one am glad to feel the bittersweet ache of being alive. The key word here is "alive" - full, present, not running away from the rich pool of all my feelings. Present to the disorientation caused by the incessant attack on our longing to connect with each other, fully feeling that which is unsquashable in me, in all of us. Thank you Celia, for speaking, for writing, for living from your deepest truth as it's born every moment.
One of my favorite Richard Ford short stories--"Great Falls" begins with this sentence, I warn you, this is not a happy story. I think I'm right, thought I'm reaching back through 25 years of memory. The dialogue--particularly this forum that you've set up, Celia, makes me want to write. It makes ideas and experiences begin to percolate. For years, my brew has been stale. And when I felt compelled to write it was because I was angry and anger is not the place I really want to write from. I don't usually text as I have a dumb phone. But for nearly thirty years, I spent two to three hours on the phone every Saturday morning with my mother. When this began to fall apart, as she became more and more ill, I felt this lovely connection fall away. Somehow our phone relationship had become something more and had taken on a life of its own that was independent and distinct from our in-person relationship. Sometimes it often felt as if we bonded more via the phone than in person and that was troubling. Something about the arbitration of the phone made talking a bit easier and yet I always felt that the reverse should have been true.
I think that maybe a lot of people are not old enough to remember (or maybe never knew) that Bell Telephone was a subsidiary of Alexander Graham Bell's American Bell Telephone company which was then bought out by American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). It was often referred to as "Ma Bell" well into my early childhood (in the early 70s). I was 10 in 1975 and was quite familiar with rotary phones and Ma Bell.
When the US government filed an antitrust suit against AT&T and broke up the "Bell System" then we had the "birth" of the "Baby Bells", i.e., the 7 regional Bell Telephone providers. Where I lived in California, the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph became the regional provider and was renamed to Pacific Bell or PacBell for short.
On the east coast, Atlantic Bell eventually became Verizon which, oddly enough, is a portmanteau of veritas (Latin for "truth") and horizon.
Anyway, I have suffered through all of these throughout my life at different times. Currently a Verizon customer in an area where AT&T also provides service. Somethings never change despite how they're rearranged.
As a deeply introverted person (which makes me somewhat of a pariah, outcast reviled weirdo) I dislike telephones. Intensely. The paradox of weirdos like me is that as much as I avoid interacting with people, when ultimately I must do so I much prefer to do it face to face. I don't know why. I just feel uncomfortable talking to someone who I'm not present with.
Your topic is very subtle but in my opinion it is worth thinking about. What other ancillary or unintended consequences has the alienation caused by telephones had?
Now that you remind me of it, the late novelist David Foster Wallace (death attributed to suicide) said in one of his novels that the telephone would never become associated with a screen showing the face of one interlocutor to the other. The reason being, Wallace thought, was that people primarily use the telephone to hear themselves talk, not to actually do the hard work of listening to what the other person says. Has "Zoom" disproven Wallace's idea? I'm not so sure. Zoom seems to be used more for business interactions. Personal and casual conversations ("yakking"?) still seem to occur on screen-less phones. But then what do I know, my "Obama" government phone is about to be disconnected if I fail to make a call every thirty days.
This is making me feel more lonely. Sending messages to my newfound internet friends like Celia and so many commenters that I have never seen in person has been a lifeline for me. I have never liked the telephone, but at least I could hear a real voice. I do have a few friends that I see, thank God. We do have real conversations. So glad I will see one of them tomorrow.
My most favorite memories of the telephone: as a teenager, talking for hours on the phone in the upstairs hallway, the cord stretched across the stairs into my room. Particularly, my first real boyfriend, Phil. My mom wised up and ponied up money for a phone jack in my room and I had my own phone number! With its own special ringtone. Phil and I would talk at night, and I'd fall asleep to his voice, then hear a click that woke me up. He hung up...I loved to hear him talk. I don't think swiping left or right is any comparison to those precious times. I love the old phones. Texting is a horrible way to communicate with loved ones, unless it's an emergency of course...
The problem with the phone is the lack of facial cues and body language with which to make meaning and interpretation of the other person's state and communication. Same with any non face-to-face communication.
It's one reason why psychopaths and sociopaths and fake personas have been able to ascend so far so quickly. We are lacking the unconsious cues that trigger our survival defence mechanisms, the behaviors that cause the hairs on the back of our necks to stand up and alerts our conscious mind to the fact that something does not add up here.
Has anyone else noticed that since the (if not completely fake, over-hyped) Covid pandemic many if not most stores have put up barriers between customers and check out clerks? Perhaps like the (mostly worthless) Covid masks, meant to distance and alienate people from each other?
After all, "divide and conquer" is probably the oldest strategy in the books that reviled rulers use to keep their subjects from getting together in solidarity and overthrowing the whole rotten system.
Interesting you bring that up. I have noticed within the last week, some businesses I have been to throughout the panic era have put up plexiglass partitions just recently.
Excellent, insightful observation, E.Z.
I think the book "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker brought home to me how important it is to be able to get those intuitions in the first place, and then to be alert to them and to trust them. I've become a lot more trusting of my intuitions as a result, and of the need to have direct 'real' data on which to make them.
I love that book and am a big fan of Gavin de Becker.
GREAT BOOK! I read it 27 years ago when it first was published. The information sticks with me until this day!
Perhaps a part of their (our psychotic/demonic controllers) agenda all along with the "Internet" and various cell phone devices; it allows them to flourish and control people more effectively.
There are hundreds of people arrested and now are being forgotten in jail for the "crime" of attending, for the most part a peaceful protest rally in Washington. Many of those people that were identified and arrested was through their smart phones/cell phones.
I miss seeing my daughter but getting a phone call is always nice as she lives over 300 miles away, the problem is, she doesn't call, she texts and I hate that, which Ive told her many times. I absolutely hate texts and cell phones, mine stays in a faraday bag unless I need it on the road, which is rare. Kids today think texting is fine but it's not, it's destructive to the human connection and we've really lost that. I have had a landline my entire life, Im 72 so its been along time. If cell phones went away tomorrow Id cheer. Thanks for your post Celia, it made me think.
Let me just say: I also hate texting. I hate it!
But you're a writer!
I would venture that's why writers hate texting: it's like the difference between a two year old babbling (texting) and a post-doc writing a thesis. If one is proficient at the latter who wants to lapse back into the former?
Not sure about that. They're two different writing styles requiring two different skill sets. There would be considerable skill involved, for example, in communicating the essence of a post-doc thesis clearly in a short text - perhaps not unlike the skill required to write good headlines for newspaper stories? On the other hand, a lot of post-doc theses are full of nothing but BS and nonsense!
My landline is $42.00 a month, allot cheeper than a cell phone.
wow, I have 2 cells and 2 iPads, I pay $90 a month.
The Rings of Alienation: My friend and I yesterday were mutual casualties of texting. He thought I was lecturing him. I felt he was overreacting. Had we been in the same room, all that could have been avoided and in hindsight made me wish that instead we'd been talking on the phone.
The electronic age has created a longing that shows up as dependence on dopamine hits from phones and screens. A cycle of dissatisfaction as hearts and souls are excluded from the circuit.
I miss letters. The energy conveyed by hand writing. Beautiful deliberate cursive or cryptic scribble. My best friend in NY was left-handed and I remember the funny angle of her cursive, how it amplified her sense of humor.
I cherish notes from my mother. Sometimes the stain of a teardrop changes the meaning of all the words. Hearts can’t really communicate the same way through phones.
We miss so much when we reduce communication to data.
And you're so right, the hand writing…I am just so disassociated from my legible hand writing. I see the trauma levels in my hand writing and I wish I could take a course in penmanship.
Same. I wonder if we can heal some of that with the practice of handwriting. We all need to reclaim our bodies in as many ways as possible.
Yes! My mom always sent me letters in bright yellow envelopes and when she died (1999) …that was one of so many losses, never seeing those yellow envelopes in my mailbox ever again.
So beautifully said Ann.
The art of writing! YES! I remember picking out stationary as a little girl. I always wrote thank you notes! I loved it!
Or just writing a heartfelt letter! I miss that.
I never owned a cellphone or any wireless device. I always had a landline. When I don't want calls I take the plug out so the phone won't ring. I have always done that. I hate getting phone-calls when I'm busy creating or relaxing. So it's my decision when I want to be 'disturbed' by outsiders. None of my children have a cellphone (and they even have cellphone-less friends) and my husband has one for work but it's switched off 90% of time. Consciously choosing to go 'wired' is a solution and I wish more attention could be given to people who live like this as an inspiration to others.
I am hostile to cell phones and smart phones in general. Let me count a few of the ways.
° They emit powerful microwaves which are very toxic to the body. The ratio of temporal lobe brain cancer now mimic the 9 to 1 ratio of handedness.
° They are Deep State surveillance devices far worse than Orwell’s ubiquitous telescreens of 1984.
° They are addicting - quite literally, especially for children.
° They are the first step to the metaverse where our malevolent overlords convince us to live in a simulation they have constructed.
° In summary they are demonic.
I live in a somewhat rural part of Mexico. When I bought my building lot 10 years ago, there was a telephone stuck in the middle of it. I assumed that I could get a real house phone. Turns out that the line just skipped over my little town and there is nothing I can do about it.
Yes, the harmful health effects of EMF radiation need to be more widely understood and addressed. Hopefully, it's not already too late.
https://francesleader.substack.com/p/all-my-substack-articles-on-emfc19
https://search.brave.com/search?q=solari+5G+jason+bawden-smith&source=web
Here is my personal cell phone strategy: It is always on airplane mode. When I am away from my laptop (out in the world) I will use my phone only to make a necessary call. Then it goes right back on airplane mode. If I am at my house, I check for texts on my laptop, where my friends and family know to 'text' my proton email account. It works great. They all know I am not immediately available. Texting me is more like using an answering machine. It did take a long time for family to not be offended when there was no immediate response. But my life improved immensely with this strategy, as I am in control of when I enter the realm.
My grandmother lived to be a 100, which spanned the 20th Century. I once asked what she thought was the most seminal technology that affected her life, thinking she would answer horseless carriages becoming automobiles or TV. Without hesitation she said ☎️
I can understand that. Telephones were rare before 1900 and postal services were either unavailable or prohibitively expensive before about 1840. Before that, the only way of contacting friends and loved ones was by going to visit them. If they travelled overseas, in most cases you had no way of knowing whether they were still alive unless and until they came back. Imagine that!
When I was 5 (six decades ago) my mom would put me on the Greyhound and send me off to visit nan for the week end a couple of hours away all by myself! Imagine that!! 😉
Yes, I remember those days, too. It was a different reality, a different world - in some ways better, in some ways not. Your Greyhound adventures must have been quite character building!
Good question :)
I should've qualified the context because indeed I was asking about the most positive change. She didn't live long enough to see us all carrying computers in our pockets.
I have a 20-year old Nokia and use it as little as possible, and rarely carry it with me. I don't like being interrupted by a ring-tone; but a person dropping in at the house is o.k. I don't think I've ever phoned anybody just to 'have a chat' (well, maybe my mother when she was alive). I prefer email, or a text, and then I have time to consider how to reply.
This is just my unprofessional opinion. (I have no advanced degree in psychology.) Introverts don't talk much but when they do their words have meaning. They truly want to connect with their listener so they don't use language cheaply. The purpose of speaking for them is to convey and receive information.
Extroverts talk to think out loud because their brain is not wired to think internally "in their heads." Speaking for extroverts is a form of grooming. They don't use it to convey information but to put people at ease. Thus their propensity for inane "small talk."
When the two get together (extroverts and introverts) frustration and misunderstanding often result. The former ( extroverts) chatting the latter (introverts) seeking meaning and information.
Thank you for replying. For an "unprofessional opinion" that reads pretty good to me. I confess to being a fairly extreme introvert. And we live in an extrovert society, which I find exhausting. As an artist/craftsperson I work alone. I'm hopeless at organising others; I couldn't organise the proverbial piss-up in a brewery. But I make stuff, which takes 100s of hours of focus and concentration - which I doubt an extrovert could manage.
I agree, it's two differing approaches. I recharge my batteries in solitude; extroverts in a crowd. Fortunately I'm married to a writer & introvert - and that's why we get on so well. 😊
I, on the other hand, positively loathe someone just 'dropping by' on the 'off chance' when I might be in the middle of something quite important and absorbing. These days I can't see why anyone would when they can forewarn you. For the record I'm an artist who might be classed as extrovert, but introvert when in work mode.
I quite like being interrupted by someone dropping by, it's an excuse to stop and take a break. At least they've made an effort to visit personally; it's pretty rare anyway. I have an extrovert side and like being 'on stage' giving poetry recitals but in work mode, I'm in a total introvert space - otherwise accidents can happen when using powerful machinery.
I'm interested in knowing how you managed to hang on to your 20 year old Nokia. I was forced out of mine 2 years ago when the G-tower upgrades started coming on line. Mine was a 3G and to my knowledge there are no more working 3G towers and a 3G cell phone will not work on the 5G towers.
I live in Portugal, and 3G is everywhere here (as is 4G which most people are on, and now 5G is appearing in cities. I live deep in the countryside). Best regards, Josh.
Similar to the advent of television and air conditioning, the mobile phone has probably done exceedingly more damage dividing us socially - at least in the realm of real relationship, person to person.
I recall the home phone, back in the day, when you never knew who might answer on the other end and often had a few minutes to catch up before the phone went to the intended party. (Remember party lines?) And before answering machines and caller id, extra long cords, busy signals and/or just letting it ring while we ate a meal together as a family. We all managed to live without phones attached to our bodies. I miss that.
Since I won't conduct conversations by text, I have lost contact with nearly everyone. Family and close friends, who have been told I prefer hearing a voice, if only for a few minutes, and know I will not respond in any detail by text, insist on this as their only means of communication. (To call them is to get their voicemail and I don't leave random "hello, miss you" messages anymore - that only makes it worse.) Without the ability to hear vocal cues, or see a wink in the moment, there have been too many misunderstandings through email and text. How much time have I wasted trying to define emoticons! And there aren't any books on etiquette, like when am I expected to reply when there's no RSVP? Must I join in the canned and now new "loved" such and such copied group messages? And then there's the pain and time spent wondering why there was no response to a "how are you" text or to be left hanging in text oblivion at the end of a brief communique.
Even in social spaces, people are glued to their screens, while life is happening all around them. It's a joy to find someone able to hold a conversation in person, without their phone taking priority.
Maybe it's me, idk. But I miss the connections, when you knew your friends so well that a phone call only put icing on the cake. I suppose memories are what fuel me these days....and look forward to what God has planned beyond this life. So I save the phone for an emergency whilst learning to accept things as they are, enjoying life alone, at my own speed.
Not in the least a bummer. I for one am glad to feel the bittersweet ache of being alive. The key word here is "alive" - full, present, not running away from the rich pool of all my feelings. Present to the disorientation caused by the incessant attack on our longing to connect with each other, fully feeling that which is unsquashable in me, in all of us. Thank you Celia, for speaking, for writing, for living from your deepest truth as it's born every moment.
One of my favorite Richard Ford short stories--"Great Falls" begins with this sentence, I warn you, this is not a happy story. I think I'm right, thought I'm reaching back through 25 years of memory. The dialogue--particularly this forum that you've set up, Celia, makes me want to write. It makes ideas and experiences begin to percolate. For years, my brew has been stale. And when I felt compelled to write it was because I was angry and anger is not the place I really want to write from. I don't usually text as I have a dumb phone. But for nearly thirty years, I spent two to three hours on the phone every Saturday morning with my mother. When this began to fall apart, as she became more and more ill, I felt this lovely connection fall away. Somehow our phone relationship had become something more and had taken on a life of its own that was independent and distinct from our in-person relationship. Sometimes it often felt as if we bonded more via the phone than in person and that was troubling. Something about the arbitration of the phone made talking a bit easier and yet I always felt that the reverse should have been true.
I think that maybe a lot of people are not old enough to remember (or maybe never knew) that Bell Telephone was a subsidiary of Alexander Graham Bell's American Bell Telephone company which was then bought out by American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). It was often referred to as "Ma Bell" well into my early childhood (in the early 70s). I was 10 in 1975 and was quite familiar with rotary phones and Ma Bell.
When the US government filed an antitrust suit against AT&T and broke up the "Bell System" then we had the "birth" of the "Baby Bells", i.e., the 7 regional Bell Telephone providers. Where I lived in California, the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph became the regional provider and was renamed to Pacific Bell or PacBell for short.
On the east coast, Atlantic Bell eventually became Verizon which, oddly enough, is a portmanteau of veritas (Latin for "truth") and horizon.
Anyway, I have suffered through all of these throughout my life at different times. Currently a Verizon customer in an area where AT&T also provides service. Somethings never change despite how they're rearranged.
Wonderful essay, Ms. Farber.
As a deeply introverted person (which makes me somewhat of a pariah, outcast reviled weirdo) I dislike telephones. Intensely. The paradox of weirdos like me is that as much as I avoid interacting with people, when ultimately I must do so I much prefer to do it face to face. I don't know why. I just feel uncomfortable talking to someone who I'm not present with.
Your topic is very subtle but in my opinion it is worth thinking about. What other ancillary or unintended consequences has the alienation caused by telephones had?
Now that you remind me of it, the late novelist David Foster Wallace (death attributed to suicide) said in one of his novels that the telephone would never become associated with a screen showing the face of one interlocutor to the other. The reason being, Wallace thought, was that people primarily use the telephone to hear themselves talk, not to actually do the hard work of listening to what the other person says. Has "Zoom" disproven Wallace's idea? I'm not so sure. Zoom seems to be used more for business interactions. Personal and casual conversations ("yakking"?) still seem to occur on screen-less phones. But then what do I know, my "Obama" government phone is about to be disconnected if I fail to make a call every thirty days.
This is making me feel more lonely. Sending messages to my newfound internet friends like Celia and so many commenters that I have never seen in person has been a lifeline for me. I have never liked the telephone, but at least I could hear a real voice. I do have a few friends that I see, thank God. We do have real conversations. So glad I will see one of them tomorrow.
My most favorite memories of the telephone: as a teenager, talking for hours on the phone in the upstairs hallway, the cord stretched across the stairs into my room. Particularly, my first real boyfriend, Phil. My mom wised up and ponied up money for a phone jack in my room and I had my own phone number! With its own special ringtone. Phil and I would talk at night, and I'd fall asleep to his voice, then hear a click that woke me up. He hung up...I loved to hear him talk. I don't think swiping left or right is any comparison to those precious times. I love the old phones. Texting is a horrible way to communicate with loved ones, unless it's an emergency of course...