Heard a song from the 80s reference a "long distance call" and it occurred to me that this is a concept that no longer holds any emotional currency whatsoever
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Making a call home from France while studying abroad in the 1980s: go to a facility akin to a post office filled with phone booths; request a call at the main desk; they dial to make the connection, then give you a booth number where you go to to complete the call.
Sorry, but Wikipedia doesn't distinguish. 🤷♀️
"The term 'floppy disk' appeared in print as early as 1970, and although IBM announced its first media as the Type 1 Diskette in 1973, the industry continued to use the terms 'floppy disk' or 'floppy'."
The line that broke my heart was "She's living in L.A. with my best old ex-friend Ray." Damn, dude! That brought the whole song together. He didn't just lose her. He lost her to his best friend, and now she's not answering his calls. "You've been so much more than kind. You can keep the dime."
Did anyone have a pre-paid phone card so you could use a pay phone for free long distance? I rode my bike cross-country in the 90’s with only a phone card for communication
I grew up in a rural area that was long-distance from everywhere. Even my high school. My mom made me carry a phone card and a beeper so she could get a hold of me.
I don’t remember anyone else in high school having a beeper but I did. A cute translucent blue one. I feel like this is a distinctly xennial experience.
In the early 2000s I worked at a company that sold white label prepaid phone card service. We did the MCI cards from Costco which had the best terms, no BS. We briefly flirted with scammy cards but the cost of service calls and credit card chargebacks made them unprofitable. Served the MBAs right.
I tell my kids that if you called someone and they weren't home, it would just ring and ring until you'd had enough. Then you'd call back later!
Then the answering machines with regular-sized cassette tapes, then the mini tapes.
Back in the 60s there was an ongoing joke on the TV show Hee Haw where Jr. Samples did advertisements for his used car lot telling viewers to “Call BR-549”
Apparently, in the old days, rural phone exchanges used 5 digits for small towns.
In Ireland it could be as little as one digit, as in Askeaton 9, there were so few phones and it could take years to get one, unless you knew the local politician.
We like to hike in the southwest of Ireland (the Kerry Way), and I understand that the Black Valley was the last place in Ireland to get electricity - in the 1970s.
As a kid, we had a “party line” phone. Ours rang three times. (But that was a 7 digit number.)
I know it well, we had cousins not too far away who got the “power” in but requested it be removed a couple of months later because the light was too bright, they lived out their lives under the warm glow of oil lamps.
We had no phone until 1989 when the system was finally kicked into modernity.
And calling the operator. She connected the call. I put the coins in. After a while, the operator told me time was up. Then, she came to the phone booth, took out the coins, which went back to the bar for the next caller.
Or party lines. A lot of the technology of the 80s that’s gone now was replaced with something that’s arguably worse. Modern telephones and SSDs are the shining exceptions.
Or even land line phones connected to the wall with a wire. Having that phone on the kitchen wall with the extra long curly wire so you could cook while on the phone.
It brings to mind a line from an 80s song, “I’ll drop a caribou, tell on you” by a Canadian band, referencing the caribou on the 25 cent quarter. Nobody Carrie’s quarters anymore so the song’s line has lost a lot of meaning.
That not only gets the operator, but also that Sylvia's "too busy to come to the phone", bringing up the nearly obsolete concept of calling a place rather than a person.
William Gibson’s Neuromancer (or one of that trilogy at least) has a line of payphones where each ring in turn as a character walks by. Gibson got an astonishing amount right but not mobile phones 🤷♂️
In California, at least, they seem to mostly use some kind of expensive phone service now, instead of collect calls, IME. Someone (the inmate or someone on his behalf, I think) adds money to his account, which allows them to make calls.
I had to hear the dial tone before I could start dialing.
I remember one time my sister wanted me to dial a number for her. She picked up the phone and I just sat there. "Well?" She says. "I can't hear the dial tone."
Future generations will never understand a song where a guy tells the story of his heartache to a telephone operator and eventually gives up on his phone call and tells her to keep the dime…
"Long distance information
Give me Memphis, Tennessee
Help me find a party
That tried to get in touch with me"
That might as well be Sanskrit to today's generation, but I still find it impossible to keep still when I hear it . . . .
Sometimes I think how there's a whole episode of Doctor Who whose plot is contingent on a telephone operator suspecting something is wrong and calling the police.
Cordless handsets were a whole other level of eavesdropping. I could tune into the phone calls on a radio dial. It was better than picking up another phone because it was undetectable.
As a typical teen girl who, I spent lots of time hogging the 1 phone line in our house. My dad used to pick up the phone downstairs to tell me it was time for dinner. LOL!
That didn't happen at my house growing up. We only had one phone and it was in the hallway between the bathroom and the kitchen. We had a party line until I got to HS. That was the same year the cord got replaced with the longest available. Fun times.
I once beat an attacker over the head with a Western Electric model 500. I'll never forget the sound of that phone striking his head and the resulting ding of the bell. Still makes me smile to think about it.
This may have changed, but landlines continue to work in the midst of a power outage because the central office is required to have a backup generator which the cellular providers are not required to have.
Interested parties may fact check this. Right now, I'm too tired to bother.
I look at the dates on books to make sure they are at least new enough to have cell phones. For some reason it drives me nuts that the characters can't call each other except on a landline.
they were 50 cents by then, but i had a long distance card. i mostly used pay phones to have long weekly chats with my mom, since i can't stand talking, or trying to hear, on cell phones
oh yeah. i'm not even sure the ones i used to use are still around, this was when i was living on the other side of the island. I do not know if there are any left where i am now!
The Midwest, or at least the Upper Midwest is still keeping bowling leagues alive! Along with softball, kickball & pickleball leagues. Bowling is not nearly as prevalent as in the past for a variety of reasons, but they're not totally gone.
Years ago I took some cub scouts to a telephone / communication museum and we spent a good 20 minutes watching them try to understand how to use a rotary phone.
The younger people today can't even imagine long distance calls, phone booths, rotary phones, telephone operators...or even dial-up Internet service; some don't even get the concept of emails ("letter-writing") since there's been texting.
Exact the first words in my brain when I saw that! Though, I think there is an even older, maybe, country one knocking around that I will have to search up.
Or remembering someone's actual phone number. I still remember my parents' number and a few old friends. Oh and yes, I remember Jenny's number (sing it with me), 867-5309
For a while, i used to think, "Wait! that doesn't make sense! There's one extra digit at the end!" After I got older and wiser, i realized that the enunciation of the final 9 was Artistic. 🤦♂️
... and finally (for now), this obscure but brilliant tune. When I get a chance, I'll ask my 17-year-old if he can decipher the meaning of the lines, "Somebody must've took the big yellow book / With the number that you call for time." https://youtu.be/z66IIzQ5B9w?si=3ZAMjyHSTPJ6BBnS
My college radio show was called The Dial Tone, so that I could always be like "...and you are listening to The Dial Tone." A now indecipherable phrase.
I got a busy signal last month. Took me a second to figure out if it was that or an out of service tone, which I also hadn't heard in at least a decade.
I think at the root of many of our problems is the loss of people's ability to feel for others, to empathize. It's been lost because of advanced technology which helps to enable immediate gratification. Delayed gratification was a vital lesson that's been lost in modernity.
On the flip side of that coin, that same tech allows us to see into the lives of people in ways which only a decade ago would be unfathomable
Is empathy a finite resource? I for one hope not, but I do worry about the world becoming desensitized to others pain
I'm afrait that the feeling that we've been desensitized to pain of others is not really correct. Before we could just more easily pretend that problems outside our closest sphere of information did not exist, because we heard about them only occasionally. Even if we knew it was not true.
I see awareness as a good thing.
The ability to make informed decisions, hold informed opinions.
The empathy side of things is separate, we are either empathic or we are not.
I know it's rooted in our tribal nature and hope the world can become one massive tribe.
Time for the world to grow up?
I took a free round trip flight from DC to Hawaii using my long distance points back in the late 90's. A point per minute back then, and my best friend lived in California. Literally, our phone conversations paid for my flight!
As a kid in the late 90s i loved singing Sylvia’s Mother and when the operator not only cuts in but needs what was at that time a small amount of change it was wild to me
We had a party line when I was growing up. I doubt many people even know what that is these days. Under no circumstances were we to make a long distance call without parental permission. You could rack up a heck of a bill in short order! The "good ol' days", right?
We had a party line when young. Button on top of the phone. I remember calling a friend in Germany and having to call the operator to connect the call.
We still sort of had that in the early 80's. I worked at an auto dealership and all long distance calls went through the telephone operator. You had to give them your number and then the call was placed.
IIRC private lines did not even become available to us (rural Virginia) until 1974 or so & were very expensive. We still used the same old "basic black" rotary dial phone in '77 when I joined the Air Force. Pushbutton phones & answering machines (cassette, of course) were "high tech" back then. 🤣
In the UK we were allowed local calls (own town). National calls were rare. We didn't have long distance, but that would probably have been international. It made the local papers if someone made one of those. Mind you, there wasn't a great deal of point to making them as no one knew anyone "abroad"
Same thing here (U.S.). Local calls were covered under basic phone service. But long distance calls were billed by the minute. We were rural, so "local meant" anything within ~15 miles from us. We wrote letters to out of state family, in cursive no less. Long distance calls were "emergency only".
Yep. Distance is irrelevant anymore. Cell phones can call anyone, anywhere. And with a international plan you can call other countries too. Area codes are irrelevant. It's so weird to think about.
Here’s another one: “they paved paradise and put up a parking 🅿️ lot.” The old songs had a lot to say about societal ills and how we are selling the planet 🌏 and humanity down the river. And for what? Our lives are a blink of an 👁️ .
Operator, yeah I'm a human. Ok yes there are four sidewalks. Ok now there are three fire hydrants. Operator won't you let me place this call? What do you mean 504 gateway error‽
It's a generational thing. When I was at a state university in the 70's, my first semester Ma Bell bill to call Detroit from Kalamazoo was more than my tuition until I learned to call only on the weekend.
Oh, and yeah, who remembers the monopoly of phone service, Ma Bell (AT&T)?
Went to college 120 miles from home and the expense of long distance (charged by the minute) meant almost no contact except an occasional letter. Prepaid calling cards weren’t a thing yet. Our dorm rooms did have a phone!
Tape-free voice mail systems became a thing in spring 1999 when dorms at Methodist College (now University; Fayetteville, NC) installed a universal phone system
with provided phones that replaced individual residents' phones like mine (mine had built-in answering machine). 😯
International calls there's still some of that. I remember "call-back" services, where you'd give the number you want to call, and hang up. A few seconds later, you'd get a call that would connect you, for the lower rate of incoming calls.
No kidding. When I was growing up, getting to make a long-distance call was a treat, getting to talk to someone very precious (a grandparent, say, or, later, a girlfriend) who was far away. Receiving one, particularly at night, was, unless you were expecting it, almost never good news.
I find the same thing with what was once one of the great opening lines in sci-fi. From Neuromancer by William Gibson "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
SO MANY Phone books. My mom would write people's phone numbers on the cover. Then we'd get a new phone book &she'd do the same thing.
We couldn't ever throw them out.
Not me trying to explain to my 11 year old niece what "Here's a quarter; call someone who cares" means when she literally has no idea whatsoever that phones and phone service costs money or that anyone ever paid whole ass dollars to make a single phone call
Also reminds me of a conversation I had about RadioShack and how the current generation doesn't fix or tinker with electronic items, they just replace anything that is remotely broken which is definitely going to be a sore point when the inevitable collapse of the USSA happens
I knew several clerks and managers at my local ones (late '80s-early'90s.) Radio Shack policy at the time was if the floor wasn't busy, you were expected to be in the back room reading the manuals and watching the training videos for every product.
Then they just went to selling phones, and...well.
I remember dialing just the last four digits of the number. Then we had to dial 1 number of the local exchange. Then they changed it to all 7 numbers! That was a lot of numbers on that bowling ball of a phone we rented from the phone company.
I drove though an old Canadian town a couple of years ago and a few of the businesses still just had their last 7 on the window (my memory is last 4 but I don't know how I would know it's a phone).
Some parts of that song still hit hard tho. "Staccato signals of constant information, and a loose affiliation with millionaires and billionaires... The way the camera follows us in slow mo, the way we look to us all... Don't cry, baby, don't cry"
Dr. Hook - Sylvia's Mother
I was listening to it in the car the other day and I reflected on the fact that young people today would have no ides what you were talking about...
You had to go to the store or bank to make sure you had enough change for the call.
My mother lives in Norway and long distance call does still have relevance because she has to call me since my cell service does not call out of the EU.
In Canada you can still be charged long distance even though our switchboard operators were replaced completely by the early 80s with digital systems. The fee is just there to keep enriching our telecom monopolies. #Telecom #CdnPoli
I remember it well. 1965 my husband was on an aircraft carrier in the south China Sea. When they docked, phone lines would be connected it cost $4.00 a minute to talk to him, at that time I made $1.78 an hour!
It’s wild how something that used to be a big deal—like the stress of a long-distance call racking up charges—has completely vanished from our collective experience. Now, we just FaceTime for free and complain about bad WiFi.
M parents actually got a 1-800 number so I could call from anywhere for cheap. Though speaking of which … I can’t remember the last time I saw a 1-800 number in an ad?
My grandmother moved from Brooklyn to Chicago w husband and children. (My dad). She was torn from her beloved Irish family. She couldn’t afford long distance calls (wartime) and returned home by train only for funerals. Bleak and heartbreaking obstacles in life.
My parents didn't have a home phone. When I was in college, my mom would call me from a pay phone on the evenings when she knew I stayed at our aunt's. One coin got you three minutes of long-distance, so mom would talk really fast and to the point.
I was stationed in Germany in the 80's and our phone had a counter on it that was 10 cents a click and LD calls to the states would click every 2 seconds.
It also shows the power a monopoly can have over prices and how long it can take to overcome the effects. Ma Bell was broken up in 82 and 84. It is a good thing we have less and less regulation as industries consolidate into virtual monopolies.
And within our generation, we went from no lines, party lines, long distance, and fuzzy 'round the world communication to talking for free in my car to my colleague in Europe in crystal clear audio driving down the highway.
Yup. Born in 1957 and have experienced all those things. When we moved to suburbia in 1961, my parents had used all their resources for the down payment and the moving expenses. Couldn’t afford the fees for a phone for a month or so. Crazy!
Well, then you are not calling other countries using telephone landlines anymore.
It's still a thing, John.
Whatsapp doesn't care, that's true. But it's different if you're in a country where a king or dictator wants to control everything and bans VoiP, like in Dubai and other countries like that.
This song and others capture that brief period in time when dropping a coin in a pay phone and getting no answer was the loneliest feeling in the world. I think Mary Chapin Carpenter was the last artist to capture it. I guess now it’s the unanswered text.
Does anyone remember choosing how you’d like to be charged for local calls?
It was either a few cents per minute for those that rarely used their phones for outgoing calls or a flat fee of either ten or twelve cents for each local call dialed no matter how long.
Yup. Am old.
Thanks! I couldn't figure out what it was referencing. I grew up with tech, but never heard that acronym/term. I honestly don't remember a midpoint. Then again, I was insanely late to get a Smartphone. I was stubborn about keeping my phone with the QWERTY keyboard. And I had a laptop when I had that
They generally looked something like this, the big player in the space was Palm, you interacted with them using a stylus. Most of them didn't have wifi, which is fine because most houses and offices didn't either. You had to plug it in to your computer with a proprietary cable to sync it.
Oh, yeah...I never had anything resembling that. 😂 But I know exactly what it is. I never heard of it called anything but a Palm Pilot. I do see it referenced in older stories I read though.
Palm Pilot is an example of Trademark Erosion. There were a bunch of PDAs, but Palm DOMINATED the market until they were usurped by BlackBerry when they merged PDAs and mobile phones.
Yeah, I would say most people that didn't own a competitor know the trademark, not the category. But I can also see why Scalzi wouldn't have been able to use the trademark in his book without some grumpy lawyers.
Serial Experiments L.A.I.N. featured them, or a "futuristic" version because the kids were connecting to the wired. I just remember seeing the styluses thinking is it really like that in Japan already? A handheld digitaldevice to take notes 📝 😆
I made my 16 year old listen to that song when he wanted to know who Jenny was. He'd seen the graffiti in a bathroom stall and didn't know why it was so funny to me.
My beloved aunt, who is 87, worked for Southwestern Bell her entire career. She started out as a switchboard operator, which is also a thing that doesn't even compute these days. "Hello. How may I connect your call?"
My mother is almost 85, she started as a switch board operator at a commercial vehicle company.
She ended up as director of sales for hydrolics.
Always proud of her.
💯 LOVE THAT MOVIE. It's a quietly beautiful bit of cinematic sci-fi and proof that you don't need big budgets or explosive action sequences to tell a riveting story. 🖤🤍👽
was thinking about this in class when students wanted to call absent group member to confirm selection for book group…casual call to Pakistan before lunch? Sure, go for it!
In the 60's on holidays, Dad would dial 0 to get operator. Request a person to person call from Boston to Britain where we came from giving them the phone number. Sometime later, the phone would ring, and that was our chance to make the call to grandparents. We 3 kids got about 30 seconds each.
I've heard loads of authors on panels at cons complain about cell phones because they seem to lack the imagination to have someone located in a cell dead zone, or have them drop a phone through a grating, or forget to charge the phone, or any of a zillion glitches that regularly occur to cell users.
In interplanetary space, even, sending a message takes minutes or hours. Same again to get the reply. This is why Mars landers etc have to be capable of landing themselves, no remote contro. Far worse in interstellar space. You can invent instant communications if you want them, but if you don't...
Connie Willis’ “The Doomsday Book” had a character waiting in an office for a phone call because it was written in a past where she envisioned a future with time travel but not cell phones. I think about this a lot.
I was just talking about this last night. Ted Lasso makes a lot of video calls. But rather than clicking hang up to end the call, he closes his laptop. Using the visual language of hanging up a phone.
Watch 70’s tv. It’s amazing how much and how far we had to go to contact someone. When they pull the plug I’m available for manual typing and shorthand 🥸
Science fiction means borderline infinite ways for whatever system it is to break and at least as many possible ways to fix it. Complex systems are fragile and you always plausibly have some heretofore unmentioned device critical to the operation of whatever the thing is.
Like Star Trek. Anytime they want to do a plot with a shuttle crashing, the planet mysteriously has "atmospheric ionization" or some shit so the transporters don't work.
Or the old romcom standby 'obvious miscommunication that nobody even attempts to rectify until the very end even though it could easily be fixed by just fucking talking to each other'.
There's several great examples of futuristic comms fucking up in the Murderbot books - one of them is simply *the company just wants to make money so it uses shitty stuff that breaks*
I kind of love watching 20+ yr old spy movies because invariably there'll be a moment when I think "a smart phone would have resolved this in 2 minutes..."
For sci-fi, lean more into the sci, less fi: craft a "world" where technical limitations prevent realtime comms between planets, etc.
Sci-fi or thriller writers can technobabble away the problem.
The issue bites harder in sitcoms / romcoms; the characters are ostensibly normal people going through everyday life, but somehow have to blunder into missed connection and miscommunication to advance the plot.
Look at the real world. How many of our problems could have been solved with a phone call, but aren't because the attitudes & opinions of the people who would have to be involved in the phone call don't allow them to make those kinds of compromise?
As an example, let's say there's a disease just starting to spread across the globe. The head of health for one gov't calls the head of health of the gov't where the disease originated.
The latter lies and insists the disease is not airborne. Then a head of gov't insists the whole thing is a hoax.
I see on the "three body problem" (I didn't read the book 😳) that much of the drama relies on communication problems. Including language and cultural differences, but technical too.
Also, was there always so many post apocalyptic based media? I don't remember that, but maybe 🤷♂️
Plenty of drama can be caused with mobile phones, too-see Crazy Rich Asians! That’s not sci fi but the same principle applies in that there’s plenty of drama to mine, it’s just different in shape.
There's a good example of that in the 1st or 2nd season of The Wire. The way that nascent mobile communications are used by drug dealers plays a central role.
Regardless, I still think a mobile less world offers more opportunities.
(And not everything can be The Wire 😃)
I didn’t like red white and royal blue the book or the movie, but I think at least the movie does long distance drama via cellphone very well so clearly it can be done!
You know when you've been listening to a song that you love for so long, and you know every lyric, but then realize you haven't thought about those lyrics in ages...
My first boyfriend did Australian National Service training in the 70s & regularly did sentry duty at his base. The sentry box could be phoned from outside. A public phone was right beside it to set up calls. A friend worked at a phone exchange.
I will say no more in case I incriminate someone.
Graceland!
Under 30's tend to look at over 70's like Simon as just old, and boring. And that may be the case, but it doesn't mean they didn't do some amazing work when younger. Check out Graceland, don't expect anything like Taylor Swift (although she's great too), but just listen and ride along.
This was long before Touch Tone phones — rotary only. There was no dial tone. But yes, look at the keypad on your phone. Those numbers spell out POPCORN
It use to be a big deal and “long distance” calls were presumed to be more important and sometimes they were because callers didn’t want to spend the money unless they were. Remember collect calls and reversing the charges?
“I ain’t missing you” - John Waite, mid 80’s. ‘And there’s a heart that’s breaking down this long distance line tonight’ - also a time when AT&T was broken up as the monopoly it was. Times haven’t changed much because AT&T is back the same today only bigger with their greedy fingers in more places.
This came up in a conversation not that long ago... although I suppose social media is kinda similar to party phone lines in some ways: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0053172/
In the early aughts one of my kids used their cell phone to then use a long distance calling card to call a friend long distance.
This should have been an either/or situation but instead, proof! their cell minutes and calling card were toast. I felt bad, they were really just trying to be smart.
In the old days, you had to call the operator and schedule a time for a long distance call. I remember being charged $11 for a 3 minute call in the late 60's.
I was broke for weeks!
I wish we still had ravens.
I remember a 3 minute $9 call to mom and dad every Sunday while I was away at college. That was really pricey since I lived on popcorn, Mac and cheese and $292 a month.
In the 1990s, I had a home based business and did business all over the world, mostly by fax. I regularly spent $300-400 a month on long distance. I had AT&T, for which I got airline points. Did a round trip to Japan and HK in business class for free. That was a $12,000 ticket. Good Clinton times.
I’m actually laughing, and crying at the same time. It was like 50 years ago when we did it. I’m 63 now. When did I get soooo old 😂 We thought we were so slick doing that. The Operator probably knew exactly what we were up to. Hell, kids nowadays probably don’t even know what an Operator is 😂
Hell, I tried to explain to my niece that there was a number you could call for the correct time and she looked at me like I had lost my damned mind.🤪🤪
Or call the lady at the library to ask a question about anything and they’d look it up for you. They were like the best kind of Google but with catalog cards.
Hahaha I was trying to explain this to my husband last night. He was talking about pay phones and I told him we had one at my middle school. And that’s exactly the message I would say if i didn’t have change. 😆 He didn’t think it was as funny a memory as I did.
I once had a hitchhiker that I allowed to stay at my house and the sister made a bunch of long distance calls, hundreds of dollars, Arguing with her boyfriend in L. A.
My great-grandmother was the first telephone operator for her little (~1,300 at the time) town in Maine. We still have the ten line plug board they installed in her house.
I still love the song Wichita Lineman! I think the "emotional currency" lingers within the gestalt of the lyrics and music, as well as the traces of historical memory.
Ah... the good old days. I was dating a Navy guy in the early 80s who got transferred to Italy and I had to wait until after 10 pm to call to get the good rates.
Anyone else remember calling your parents collect, when you arrived back at college. They knew you got there so they didn't need to accept the charges. Also, when I would go on dates I had to have a quarter for the payphone in case I needed to call my parents.
I used to call "person to person" asking for Mr Bailey, who was my deceased grandfather. That was a signal to my parents that I had arrived safely back to college
We had a one ring code. Phone and hang up after the first ring. Did that for years. Later in life I found out many people did it too, as well as the collect call idea. Long distance calling though was ridiculously expensive back then.
Born in 1960. In high school my mom made sure I always had "mad money" when dating. If you had an argument you had the means to extract yourself from the situation- money for a call home, cab fare.
In an Eddie Murphy movie (48 Hours, I think, but it could have been Beverly Hills Cop) he mentions that somebody was ratted out when somebody “dropped dime”. I always assumed that was a reference to making a phone call, since pay phones used to cost a dime.
Of course it does! I can no longer afford to call intercontinental now and I have lost touch with many friends in Europe because of it. The MCI world com card made calling France 6 cents per minute. FUCK mobile phones and the smart phone fad.
Microsoft bought skype. When they bought skype they demanded personal information or else. One does NOT put out their real identity on the internet. Microsoft was accused, multiple times by computer security experts for spying on people. All three of my skype accounts were wiped.
Yea, well … Today’s existence often requires a Microsoft account … they don’t have anymore personal info than so many other accounts do.
DOB and phone number. Do your European friends not have smartphones? Maybe Signal can work for you? Or is that also too invasive?
One of my European friends recommended Telegram but that was a while ago and before the war against Ukraine.
I don't have a microsoft account any longer. Couldn't get back into my hotmail account either.
One "weird" behavior that a lot of older people still carry over is *having* to answer the phone no matter what. Letting it ring is just not in their DNA at all.
I remember a family member only calling on Sundays because the long distance rates were lower. I actually think that was a bullshit reason, but that’s what she said.
Area codes used to mean something. Only thing it means now is that since I kept my VA cell number when I moved to TX, if anyone calls me from 703 I know it's a scam.
I remember when they (at least where I grew up) first forced the need to use area codes. People were not happy you had to add 3 more digits to the phone number 🤣
Operator, well could you help me place this call?
See, the number on the match book is old and faded.
She's living in L.A. with my best old ex-friend Ray,
A guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated.
Long distance information
Get me Memphis Tennessee.
Help me find the party trying
to get in touch with me.
She could not leave her number
But I know who placed the call
Cause my uncle took the message
and he wrote on the wall.
Remember when you could "look up" someone's number? When they got rid of phone books, they promised us that we'd always be able to find people's numbers online. Ha!
And long distance within the state was way more expensive than across state lines (where I grew up) because of federal regulations regarding interstate call prices.
Freakin' local-toll bs made me so angry. Calling my friend who moved halfway across the US after college? Reasonable price. Calling my folks just over the township border? One arm, both kegs, and a kidney please.
One of the greatest most musically and technically perfect songs ever written sung by a great guy. I have the vinyl! Jimmy Webb was genius. I don't care if no one knows it - I did! Eff what's happening now...
Jimmy Webb: "...I had seen these telephone poles along the road. ... and all of a sudden there was somebody on top of one of those telephone poles—out of thousands of telephone poles, there's one that has a guy on it, and he had one of those little telephones hooked into the wires..." 1/2 ⬇️
"I could see him on top of this pole talkin' or listenin' or doin' somethin' with this telephone. For some reason, the starkness of the image stayed with me like photography. I had never forgotten it."
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_5YtZA_-IA
Icons like a traditional handset or even a full rotary telephone for phone number, a pencil for edit, rectangular eraser for undo, etc.
"The term 'floppy disk' appeared in print as early as 1970, and although IBM announced its first media as the Type 1 Diskette in 1973, the industry continued to use the terms 'floppy disk' or 'floppy'."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk
~~
What a tremendous loss his death was... It crushed me.
"what?"
"CAN.YOU.HEAR.ME?"
"he's not coming today..."
https://youtu.be/a2EgfkhC1eo?si=q7rHK-hUWyc6BZbI
They had the vision and the assets to do it and they didn’t. Until they were broken up and had competition.
Super nerd mode ending. I hope it was interesting.
https://youtu.be/2ivp442RLS8?si=RKdSLHt8QhDj6uC2
Engelbart invented the mouse.
The reason tech is stalling out and doing LLM junk is we ran out of things from this project.
https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY?si=CjlMifMEmspRFVw2
I couldn't tell if you were being sarcastic.🫣 So if you're not... It's not bad for someone who started out, homeless at the age 18. Lol☮️
It still does, but now there’s this extra layer of sadness and detachment to it.
(Even 12 years ago I was like, bro, a payphone? really?)
Then the answering machines with regular-sized cassette tapes, then the mini tapes.
Apparently, in the old days, rural phone exchanges used 5 digits for small towns.
As a kid, we had a “party line” phone. Ours rang three times. (But that was a 7 digit number.)
We had no phone until 1989 when the system was finally kicked into modernity.
To phone England from there involved getting a bag of coins from the bar.
Teen: "Why didn't they just text you?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4QYJG8AxSw
Telephone Operator
"Here's my number and a dime"
...
"I just FaceTimed to say I♥️U" 🎵🎶
Admittedly, I don't think anyone has written a hit song about calling CVS and dealing with their telephone system.
"Here's a quarter, call someone who cares" doesn't make much sense in the modern world.
Pink Floyd: Young Lust
ELO: Telephone Line
Billy Joel: Sometimes A Fantasy
All in my favorite pile— no matter how it ages me.
It's what you hear when you and an appropriate number of your neighbors are calling your elected representatives.
•Reverse-charges call,
°Engaged tone.
Remember those
From another life”
William Gibson’s Neuromancer (or one of that trilogy at least) has a line of payphones where each ring in turn as a character walks by. Gibson got an astonishing amount right but not mobile phones 🤷♂️
I remember one time my sister wanted me to dial a number for her. She picked up the phone and I just sat there. "Well?" She says. "I can't hear the dial tone."
True story.
https://youtu.be/-qgnGH6Rg-E
Give me Memphis, Tennessee
Help me find a party
That tried to get in touch with me"
That might as well be Sanskrit to today's generation, but I still find it impossible to keep still when I hear it . . . .
https://bsky.app/profile/kenfromchicago.bsky.social/post/3libvnmwh6s2v
I still have a landline.
Won't give it up either.
Interested parties may fact check this. Right now, I'm too tired to bother.
Now you need to clue me in!
I love pranking.
Especially cold callers.
My landline is normally reserved for my medical stuff, so nuisance callers really tick me off.
https://youtu.be/wSEQaKBTR2M?si=H7du04bHH5uFC84l
See the number on the matchbook is old and faded"
I was a naughty child…
See he keeps hanging up, and it's a man answering"
I don't know. Still impactful for me... I guess I'm a dinosaur.
What kind of racket are they running?!
/s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3cMy062UUc
https://youtu.be/JcJsnt-Zciw?si=SbMSZfMx97lwnXmV
https://youtu.be/gfmo59iRJUM?si=UVi4zOfuzBZQo4B4
You killed me 😝😅😂🤣🤣
https://youtu.be/Y9aKZZJvB0E?si=ifmgMwGZWV7k7e-W
And no, the irony of taking a photo of a pay phone with my cell phone is not lost on me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI0rfv6Cw1M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL8AgEzg5fI
starting at 2:47
https://youtu.be/w6T_X7MXg40
Jack Benny was already dead, but he was still the definitive answer. I guess, now, we'd have to say George from Seinfeld.
got nothin' but time
The way we look to us all,
The way we look to a distant constellation
that's dying in a corner of the sky... "
Yeah this was the song I first thought of too.
Is empathy a finite resource? I for one hope not, but I do worry about the world becoming desensitized to others pain
The ability to make informed decisions, hold informed opinions.
The empathy side of things is separate, we are either empathic or we are not.
I know it's rooted in our tribal nature and hope the world can become one massive tribe.
Time for the world to grow up?
When I dial my baby's number, I get a "click" every time!"
-Chuck Berry, 1959
👍🏻
Take a little time off when the rays pass through
Go ahead and mix it up... Go ahead and tie it up
In a long distance telephone call
https://telephoneworld.org/landline-telephone-history/pink-floyds-young-lust-explained-and-demystified/
Oh, and yeah, who remembers the monopoly of phone service, Ma Bell (AT&T)?
My uncle worked for the phone company and "found" a spare touch-tone phone so I could have a phone in my room (this is when they were new).
Two ringy-dingys .........
There was even one for atheists - you dialled the number and nobody answered😄
Long Distance Runaround - Yes
Telephone Line - ELO
with provided phones that replaced individual residents' phones like mine (mine had built-in answering machine). 😯
We couldn't ever throw them out.
Then they just went to selling phones, and...well.
Just 5.
This was in Ireland in the 60s.
I was listening to it in the car the other day and I reflected on the fact that young people today would have no ides what you were talking about...
You had to go to the store or bank to make sure you had enough change for the call.
https://youtu.be/mg4kRwudEBs?si=-ElZk5NRbqN-u3Qf
It's still a thing, John.
Whatsapp doesn't care, that's true. But it's different if you're in a country where a king or dictator wants to control everything and bans VoiP, like in Dubai and other countries like that.
https://youtu.be/-qgnGH6Rg-E?feature=shared
Blondie’s Hanging on the Telephone is another good one.
It was either a few cents per minute for those that rarely used their phones for outgoing calls or a flat fee of either ten or twelve cents for each local call dialed no matter how long.
Yup. Am old.
There was a sense of morbid mystery. It might be a VERY important message. Grandma died, Ed McMahon's lotto, someone's missing, did you hear about...?
Because now that looks like Call me A.I
Humor me. I have no idea. 😂
She ended up as director of sales for hydrolics.
Always proud of her.
Try explaining that one to the young 'uns today!
How do you overcome such problems in sci-fi?
Hell, there are specific places in my apartment where you'll get zero service.
Even if you can communicate that doesn't mean help arrives instantly or with perfect accuracy.
Also any tool the protagonists have, the antagonists have too.. or an equivalent.
"Sunspot activity is frying our comms."
"They've cracked your cell phone. Leave it in this bag unless you want them listening in on every conversation you have."
*hurls it out the moving car window*
"They're tracking us! we have to stay off the grid!"
GOT IT!
“Fuck, battery’s dead and this is the wrong cable.”
“Here, try mine”
“I don’t know my wife’s phone #”
Smartphones can be hacked with exactly zero interaction from user. Internet connection. Cell tower connecting. Nothing more.
For sci-fi, lean more into the sci, less fi: craft a "world" where technical limitations prevent realtime comms between planets, etc.
Example Breaking Bad only really works in USA.
All other developed countries have real operational health systems.
The issue bites harder in sitcoms / romcoms; the characters are ostensibly normal people going through everyday life, but somehow have to blunder into missed connection and miscommunication to advance the plot.
The latter lies and insists the disease is not airborne. Then a head of gov't insists the whole thing is a hoax.
I see on the "three body problem" (I didn't read the book 😳) that much of the drama relies on communication problems. Including language and cultural differences, but technical too.
Also, was there always so many post apocalyptic based media? I don't remember that, but maybe 🤷♂️
First, cell phones aren't instant. It still takes time to travel somewhere and still takes effort to pinpoint someone when you arrive.
Plenty of time for the killer to set up ambush traps. 😱😱😱😠😠😠
"Captain, there are no compatible charging cables at this outpost."
Regardless, I still think a mobile less world offers more opportunities.
(And not everything can be The Wire 😃)
Kids these days no longer know if people’s refrigerators are running and who has Prince Albert in a can.
I feel dumb!!! ✌️🫨
I will say no more in case I incriminate someone.
And the silence makes me lonely
I Love Rock and Roll - Joan Jett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STG7w6h1IrM
That, Graceland, great.
Under 30's tend to look at over 70's like Simon as just old, and boring. And that may be the case, but it doesn't mean they didn't do some amazing work when younger. Check out Graceland, don't expect anything like Taylor Swift (although she's great too), but just listen and ride along.
https://youtu.be/Uy5T6s25XK4
Sad because I had a lot of good memories inside phone booths!
😁
This should have been an either/or situation but instead, proof! their cell minutes and calling card were toast. I felt bad, they were really just trying to be smart.
I was broke for weeks!
I wish we still had ravens.
Signed,
A tech-savvy boomer
Remember Candace Bergen doing those US Sprint .10 per minute long distance phone call commercials?
"HEY ROCKO, IT'S THE DIME LADY!"
Click
He hung up. This is your residence? I wonder why he hung up. Is there supposed to be someone besides your wife there to answer?”
It is amazing
> "Bob, he had his baby. It's a boy"
🤌
https://youtu.be/Zpbd2-uiOro?si=HRNbf_ETpzz2FfoA
DOB and phone number. Do your European friends not have smartphones? Maybe Signal can work for you? Or is that also too invasive?
I don't have a microsoft account any longer. Couldn't get back into my hotmail account either.
Can confirm Skype works too, I used it once in 2019 to call my school in St-Petersburg when I needed a copy of my diploma made.
Omg how can I memorise that of my husband should I get married 😂🤦
(one of the absolute classics)
See, the number on the match book is old and faded.
She's living in L.A. with my best old ex-friend Ray,
A guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated.
I proposed Elvis Costello's "Radio, Radio" with its line about "only inches on the reel-to-reel".
And OMD's "Red Frame White Light" is a whole song about old-style British phone boxes.
It's been so many years
Will she remember my old voice
While I fight the tears?
Get me Memphis Tennessee.
Help me find the party trying
to get in touch with me.
She could not leave her number
But I know who placed the call
Cause my uncle took the message
and he wrote on the wall.
https://youtu.be/iZndVv-jl-U?si=JLau9KhGt0NMldBc
https://youtu.be/_p7Ub1NDTVg?si=bSoguB4161HWnwGe
A machine with tape cassettes to record messages.
Airmail, cassettes, postcards, telex
Drop me a line, be my grapevine
I'm always trying to reach you, can't get through
"They keep hanging up."
I can hear you through the whine
and the Wichita Lineman
is still on the line
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFCuBLAjXo