Our Beloved Technology

It used to be the case that I knew a few phone numbers by heart. It was really only the most important ones which I called on a regular basis. Phones didn't hold numbers apart from the ones began to include a speed dial function, and I don't recall that we ever made use of such a thing in my household. There were, therefore, a few that I had memorized. The rest lay written by me in pencil and various hues of ink in a little brown book which remained at home to be retrieved when needed. This was not terribly often, as I was then no more fond of frequent phone conversations than I am now.

I feel a kind of nostalgia ( a word with an interesting lineage) for the phone which did nothing but make calls, and which in itself had no capacity to receive "voice mails". We had an answering machine which recorded messages on cassette tapes. I loved the little lighted numbers on the phone, and the noise they made. One can have that noise now, but it's an affectation, like a computer screen saver. I was just thinking about how you can't hear dial tone anymore. I miss that.

I haven't had a "land line" (a term I don't recall hearing before cell phones became commonplace, which was at the same time that they started being called that and not mobile phones) at any time since I stopped living with my parents. I kept subscribing to a print newspaper longer than that. Not having such a line only becomes problematic at such a time as I am now experiencing. This is to be regarded as an observation of inconvenience and, as I've said before, no plea for sympathy.

The simple phone now has so many little, chintzy moving parts. Should any one of them fail to function (such as the tracking ball on my phone), the whole thing may be rendered an inert mass of poisonous metals, plastics and compounds. The only tools you can really count on are the ones we humans began with. What could break in the invariably reliable rock? It's versatile, simple and dependable (three things that are frequently simultaneously untrue about many modern wonder devices). Supposing it did fail you- one merely tossed it aside and grabbed another suitable one nearby. No need to attempt repairs or make claims on a worthless warranty or corrupt insurance policy.

I've been thinking about access to contact information for the people I know. I didn't have very many names in that little book. I didn't know a lot of people. This was partly because of who I was, and who I am now has a lot to do with the expanded number of people I know. Perhaps also a factor, though, is how easy and quick it has become to acquire and store such information. To the phone number and street address have been, among other things, email addresses and the large number of things about people that they now unlock. When something like this thing happens, access to all of that is thrown into doubt.

I find myself in a muted version of the situation that faced me when my computer went down for a month just when I became dependent on it. Has allowing to become indispensable something we did without for thousands of humanity's most productive years been wise? Perhaps it has not. When the matter is resolved, though, I'll probably just forget about these grave qualms.