Comment by tornquist
2 years ago
Very cool project. I was really struck by this comment:
> Dial out to a short list of family contacts. It's not something I think about much, but when I was a kid there was a phone on the wall and once I could reach it, I could use it. Now, if you're not old enough to have a cell phone, you also can't call anyone at all.
That's not something I've ever thought about, but is a really huge change in what kids can do. I was always allowed to call over to a friend's house and see if they could play.
Another (weird) advantage of a landline: you didn't always know who was going to answer, sometimes you were just calling "the house," and it allowed for more serendipitous conversation.
The main example is probably just calling up your parents, whether as a kid or even as an adult calling up their elderly parents. Sometimes you just want to speak to "your parents." You didn't have to decide whether to call mom's cellphone or dad's cellphone. And you didn't have to worry about who you called last. Heck, with caller ID, mom or dad could even decide who wanted to chat with you.
My mother-in-law actually complains about this going the other way. Sometimes she just wants to call our house, because she'd love it if I randomly picked up and she could chat with me in passing. She'd find it awkward to call my phone, because we don't quite have that "chat about nothing on the phone" relationship, but it used to be that you could get two minutes of catching up with someone before you said "ok, now pass me to the person I was really calling for."
An acquaintance of mine ended up dating and ultimately marrying his friends sister. Their relationship started out of him calling “the house” to talk to his friend and the sister picking up and spending a few minutes talking with “your friend who has a nice voice”.
Material scarcity creates community. Once we hit abundance, we have to find ways to add that back, I think.
Wow. I hadn't ever thought of it this way.
Makes me wonder whether people lamented the end of party lines.
But I absolutely agree. Growing up, I occasionally had conversations with my parents’ friends when they’d call the house. I no longer have those.
Can you get a burner phone as a "landline" that she can call?
I still have a landline. It comes from free with my fiber internet anyway, all I have to do is plug a phone.
That's really handy for kids.
I dropped mine when I dropped cable TV. It had more dependable quality than the cell at my house but, for the amount of calling I do, it wasn't worth the $40/month or whatever it was.
This is why I got a landline.