/ Mark Frauenfelder / 3:50 pm Thu Apr 29, 2010

The telephone was an aberration in human development

Rick Webb: "The telephone was an aberration in human development. It was a 70 year or so period where for some reason humans decided it was socially acceptable to ring a loud bell in someone else's life and they were expected to come running, like dogs. This was the equivalent of thinking it was okay to walk into someone's living room and start shouting."

72

  2. If phoning is like somebody running into the room and shouting, texting is like somebody handing you a note and following you around until you answer.

    1. I can understand how it’s like handing someone a note, but how is it like following them around until they answer?

      1. I think the general expectation with texting is that the receiver will answer immediately. After all, it’s called “instant messaging”.

        2. “texting” is short for “text messaging,” not “instant messaging.” sapere_aude comes across as a bit of sociopath.

          I can see the point that the original quotee was trying to make, but with the advent of voicemail and phone that you can set to silence (long before the cell phone) his point becomes obsolete and he sounds like a grouch.

          The telephone is an indispensable tool for business. Period.

          It is still the fastest way to communicate between people in social situations as well – a conversation that could take 5 minutes over text can be wrapped up in 30 seconds on the phone. If you hate it then put it on silent and stop cursing the, uh, unsilence.

          1. You’re correct. I still think most people expect a pretty immediate answer to their text message in comparison to their voicemail.

          2. I fucking hate voicemail EVEN more. Why are you forcing me to listen to what is a potentially very garbled voice message for a minute and a half, when all the salient information can be presented to me in a text it takes me the better part of ten seconds to read. I don’t even leave voicemail for others if I have a choice. I text them the message. If it’s not important enough to end the call and write the message, I don’t want to be bothered for it.

          3. I agree re: voicemail, but I’m using Google Voice so I can have the (sometimes humorously) transcribed voicemail sent to my phone as a text so I can A.) set my phone to vibrate-only mode, B.) never answer calls, and C.) read the transcribed message on my phone at my leisure.

  3. This sounds smart on the face of it, but the claim doesn’t really hold water. Phone calls are also optional – no need to pick up if you’re not inclined. And how are text messages a more “natural” way of communicating? They convey much less information than the tone of a person’s voice and their phrasing. Additionally “ringing bells for people” is not unique to the telephone – think recess, breaks in factories, police sirens, air raid sirens, and, most obviously, the doorbell.

    Also, calling the phone an “aberration” is completely off the mark – phone calls aren’t going anywhere, and text messages, are a supplement to, not a replacement for, the spoken word.

  4. For a time, I set my default ringtone to silence, and custom ringtones for people I knew could understand that voice on my mobile phone is only for emergencies and coordinating (eg “ok I got here, where are you?”). Fortunately I got good enough at educating people that I don’t need to do that anymore.

    1. That is brilliant. I found myself wishing I could define rules on my phone for how to handle calls based on who is calling (i.e. always ring for certain people, even if the phone is on silent). Thank you for finding a simple way to do it!

  6. I’ve been saying this for years. I hate, hate, HATE the telephone with a raging passion; and I refuse to use it unless I have no real choice in the matter. If you call me, expect to get my answering machine. And don’t expect me to return your call, either.

    I used to like e-mail just fine; but I’m even starting to sour on it now. It’s just another way for people to bug you when you just want to be left alone. And don’t even get me started on texting and Twitter. Abominations!

    1. I am the same way. I haven’t checked my voice mail in over a year. I only answer the phone if I’m expecting a call or its from someone I know. I keep incoming calls vibrate-only most of the time. I do use text quite a bit, it’s so much less intrusive.

    2. Exactly, I’m in whole-hearted agreement. In fact I’d like to invite you to not join the antisocial-network that I’m building but that will never get out of alpha.

  7. In my ideal world I would never have to talk on the telephone with anyone, but this isn’t why. My problem is with having to listen to someone’s voice, usually over line noise, when I can’t see their face or their hands.

  8. Texting is like handing someone a note and then going about your business not knowing if they ever read it.

    Also, in my experience very few people appreciate unwanted visitors knocking on their doors; it’s always puzzled me that phones, being nearly equivalent, have gotten such a pass.

  9. While I also do not like to have to answer telephones, I don’t really buy into the aberration in human development thing. Earlier in human development, almost everyone you knew lived near you, and they could and would come by any time to talk. Even earlier in human development, there was no such thing as text. It may be that what has changed is that we live and work in such a way that these kind of interruptions are more likely to be bothersome.

  10. “70 year or so period”???

    No matter what time frames the writer might have been considering, 70 years clearly seems decades short of how long the phone has been around and dominant in large numbers.

  11. This was the equivalent of thinking it was okay to walk into someone’s living room and start shouting.

    Have you never met a Scotsman?

  12. If I remember correctly, it wasn’t until the very late 1970s that answering machines cost less than $100, so the inconvenience of ringing telephones was sort-of reasonably outweighed by the convenience of being able to have an interactive, synchronous conversation with someone thousands of miles away, combined with the poor economics of ways to avoid the interruption.

    When did local calls become essentially free? I also seem to remember that much if not most relatively local phone service was still metered back until the early 1980s.

  13. Thank God the terrible reign of the doorbell is over!

    …I skipped a couple words at the start. Did I miss anything important?

  14. I would say it’s more like knocking at your door waiting to see if you were home so we could talk.

  15. Okay, I’m antisocial; I often let answering machine or voicemail take the phone, and regard its ringing as an intrusion in my life. (I also have test messaging blocked, so I am not trading test for voice.)

    But I disagree that the phone is an aberration. Knocking on someone’s door was the way to get in touch with someone local before there were phones, and I hate someone knocking at my door even more than I hate the ringing of my phone. I can ignore or hang up the phone; sometimes people won’t stop knocking at the door until you answer, and then I am standing there, in person, in a conversation I don’t want to have. Much more immediate than a phone that I can unplug, or silence, or simply ignore.

    How is the demand of a phone ring different from the demand of a doorbell?

    People have been intruding on each others’ lives for as long as there have been people, I think. It’s certainly nothing new with the advent of the telephone. There are more ways to do it, now, and it’s possible for someone far away to do it–but it’s still nothing new.

  16. There was a time when phone calls were not rude — when people called you who you wanted to hear from. As a kid, I remember that the phone hardly ever rung, so when it did, you knew it was someone you wanted to talk to. This was before voice mail, answering machines, auto-dialers, telemarketers, and all the other noisome things that turned phone calls from pleasant conversations to things best avoided.

  18. “What fresh hell is this?”

    was Dorothy Parker’s exclamation when her train of thought was interrupted by the ringing of a new invention, the telephone.

  19. I agree with the complaint of the status given to people calling on the phone- especially in the early era of the cell phone. It always seemed weird to me that taking a call from someone who wasn’t there was more important than the conversation you were currently engaged in.

    I like texting more than phone calls for a good many things. However, the semiotics are different, and there are still many reasons for voice-to-voice conversations.

  21. What is this text message thing of which you speak? My Western Electric 500 has neither text keyboard nor display.

    I believe that before the telephone intruded on peoples’ lives, it was very time-consuming to get to talk to someone. You had to hitch up the horse to the buggy and convince it to take you to the good young lady’s house, whereupon you’d leave a calling card and hope that she replied with a letter in a few days.

    Is that somehow better?

  22. I agree that the telephone is an aberration, and I hate the ringing of the phone.

    But the text message as an innovation? Er, we had instant asynchronous communication before. There was things thing called e-mail. What’s more, you can compose e-mail on a real keyboard and touch type, and not laboriously type through on either a tiny keyboard, or, worse, a 9-digit keypad that’s less efficient to use than Moorse code.

    E-mail! Why the love of text messaging? It’s just e-mail with a minimalist interface and a culture of horrible misspelling.

  23. That would be “humans – the Mennonites”. Those boys rejected the technology, or at least banished the noise-makers to the outhouse where it belongs, for the reasons outlined above.

    Like the Luddites, they actually decided to evaluate technologies before using them instead of mindlessly adopting every single thing that comes down the pipeline simply because it’s superficially “new”. For the most part I disagree with their criteria but at least, unlike most people, they’re thinking about it.

  24. Anyone else planning to check back on their comments here to see if anyone has responded to them?

  25. Yes, the telephone is truly a horrible horrible thing. Nobody ever invented one with a ringer volume control that could goo all the way to silence. Nobody survived by ising one to call for an ambulance. Nobody ever managed to keep their house from burning down by having a neighbor call the fire department. Nobody ever found out their wife was in labor and rushed to the hospital to be there for the birth of their child.

    It is undeniable that the telephone completely ruined life as we knew it and serves no purpose other than to make annoying ringing noises.

  26. Yes, the telephone is truly a horrible horrible thing. Nobody ever invented one with a ringer volume control that could goo all the way to silence. Nobody survived by using one to call for an ambulance. Nobody ever managed to keep their house from burning down by having a neighbor call the fire department. Nobody ever found out their wife was in labor and rushed to the hospital to be there for the birth of their child.

    It is undeniable that the telephone completely ruined life as we knew it and serves no purpose other than to make annoying ringing noises.

  27. I’m sorry but “I am trying to find your house…I may be lost.” is one of many conversations that cannot be had through texts which is why people who never ever answer their phone are so irritating.

    1. Of course, it was only the mobile that actually made it possible to shift the burden of bad planning to the person one intended to visit.

  28. It’s your fault for answering the phone impulsively. I rarely answer it unless I know who’s calling.

  29. Not even close to an aberration. Humans have a propensity for violence. All communication is an act of violence in one form or another. To communicate with another person in any way, one must first invade their personal space (i.e. take their attention away from where it was previously with varying degrees of force) in order for the communication to be effective. If that invasion does not occur, no communication takes place. So when you say “excuse me” by way of initiating discourse, you are really committing assault. A telephone ringer is a passive form of assault as you are free to ignore it without immediate consequences, other than your own stress level, which carries undertones of violence all its own.

  30. A phone ringing is much less disruptive than having the relatives/neighbors/lawyers/etc. drop by in person, unannounced.

  31. I have to admit I have found reading this thread very entertaining. On one hand I can understand why people find telephone/text/email quite intrusive. On the other hand some peoples reactions seem so hilariously extreme that I am tempted to conclude that this aversion to instant communication speaks volumes about the commenter rather than the person who is trying to contact them, or they method they use.

    I have a love/hate relationship with the telephone. As a rule I don’t like it. But my reaction to being contacted is more about the context then the method of contact. For instance, I have a friend who contacts me every day to complain about work…I find her calls intrusive and in fact I often don’t answer the phone because of my reluctance to have my evening impinged on. But, about once every six-months I get an unexpected call from old friends who live overseas, and those calls are a joy to receive and not perceived as intrusive at all.

    When I call someone I always consider whether it is a good time to call and whether I think they might want to hear from me. But I am not a mind reader and there will be times that I call at inconvenient times. The expectation I have if I contact someone is that the person either won’t answer the phone of they don’t want to talk or if they do they will let me know that they would prefer to speak to me at another time.

    I guess my final point is that inconsiderate ways of communicating existed before the telephone and internet.

  32. I’m not fast enough with my fingers on such a small device. That, and I’m sort of a dinosaur… I only have a numeric pad. What? It had a really good .mp3 player for the time, and it was cute!

    Does anyone remember the days of wallphones and small enough circles of acquaintance that, chances were, you could accidentally pick up the phone and have someone else on the other end of it, even though it didn’t ring? (And, nine times out of ten, it was someone you were about to call, anyway?)

    That little artifact of technology is going away, and a slim population will even think it noteworthy. The rest won’t remember.

    p.s. I prefer talking to texting. But I ain’t agin texting.

  33. I just wanted to say – I’d never thought about it like that… just felt guilty for being slightly pissed every time someone actually calls me :)

  34. IM (as opposed to SMS) is generally worse, taking over input devices as well as shoving itself in my face. I’ve learned to work with it. But even though I’ve been using realtime text-chat systems since the 70’s, I’ll never be a fan of IM. Frankly, I’d rather it rang and gave me the choice of whether or not to admit I was avaiable.

  35. “I am not anyone’s monkey on a string.”
    —Longshoreman/philosopher Eric Hoffer explaining to me about his lack of a telephone at an open seminar

  36. What about party lines? Those were different and a thing of the past. But now people force their personalities on you with their choice of ring tone. Does Madonna or Rage Against the Machine put you in such a bad mood that you want to strike out? Well, too damned bad, because Martha in the cubicle next you happens to love Madonna. And her husband calls her 24 times a day.

  37. If I don’t recognise the number, I let it go to voicemail. If the person really wants to talk to me, they’ll leave a message, which I’ll listen to long enough to hear who it is then probably just delete it.

    Much like lalo, my phone is nowadays just for people I want to speak to.

    @grimc Since when is SMS “instant messaging”? Maybe some people expect a quick answer but I don’t. Then again, I rarely use SMS nowadays, my phone is connected to Google Chat 24×7 instead. Free, no length limitations, instant (unless I don’t feel like responding).

    Phone calls are still useful when you need to discuss more complex things that text just can’t convey easily, but I try to leave it only for those sorts of things.

  38. In other words “I don’t have a teleophone is the the new I don’t have a TV”.

    Anyway, Persons from Porlock quite predate the telephone.

  40. I no longer have a mobile for this reason: there is an expectation for you to be always attached to it, then scorn when you actually leave it at home, or turn it off.

    Not having one bypasses all that, and I still manage to use mobile email to stay in touch with people in an immediate, short term way. No stupid txt limitations.

  41. Of course, having a fully fleged computer at nearly every home is also an aberartion, mostly owned to the fact that it used to be the only device being able to access the internet.

    However, both the general computer and the telephone will stay with us for quite some time.

  42. Much like J France I’m puzzled that people really expect me to be always attached to my mobile phone. Which usually hibernates in some handbag or other. Then people sent texts when they are late for a date instead of just calling, which is silly.

  43. I very much agree with this! When I moved into my first own apt, first thing I did, disconnect the doorbell, people had to call in advance (that was pre-internet) … now they have to email. We have no landline anymore, only mobiles, in my case only for emergencies.

    By now I am even getting antsy when I watch a movie and my mom tries to skype-call me …. I always found the assumption ‘let’s call him / her, they probably have nothing better to do right now’ borderline rude … I ALWAYS have something better to do (reading BB i.e.), i NEVER sit around, waiting for my phone to ring :)

    1. To the contrary, I find it unfortunate how often it is that I have to pass on talking to my mother or someone else I care about because the obligations of life pull me a way. While those things may be more necessary and urgent, I rarely find them to be better than talking with people I care about.

      In general, I’m puzzled by the kind of interpersonal relationships that some of the people in this thread are implying that they have. I can’t imagine trying to completely dictate the terms and times in which I was willing to talk to friends. In my mind, part of what it means to be a friend is allowing people access to me, even when it is not at my convenience. It’s almost too cliche to mention, but in the final accounting I find it hard to believe that I would trade off time talking to friend for more opportunities to watch movies.

    2. @caipirina: So, let me get this straight. You think it’s borderline rude for a member of your immediate family – your mother, no less – to assume that you ever, at any point, don’t have anything better to do than talk to her? And your primary or paradigm example of something that is without exception more important to you is *reading Boing Boing?* I hope, given that translation, that you can see how sad and unpleasant a sentiment that is.

      I think sapere_aude is probably right that the divide here is introvert/extrovert, but I’m still surprised by how common an extreme degree of introversion is around here…and yes, a deep hatred of all spontaneous communication with other human beings is an extreme degree of introversion. I’m mostly an extrovert, but I value my alone time, in proportion – though I certainly don’t experience a flash of apparently near-homicidal rage if my cell rings and someone just wants to catch up or see what I’m doing.

      Personally, I don’t like the phone, but it’s mostly because I don’t like having to hold my arm/head/shoulder in an odd position for a long time, and a lull in conversation during a phone call is awkward, compared to say IM. But this attitude that society in general should adhere to an extreme introvert’s standard for social behavior is, if you’ll forgive me, insane. And it’s certainly contrafactual to imagine that a society’s failure to adhere to it is a historical “aberration.”

  44. The part I find amazing is that people once put up with a system where a ringing phone rang everywhere and people had to listen for a coded ring for their house.

  46. That’s nothing. My cats have bells on their collars, and you’d be crazy, too, if you had bells jingling in your ears all day long.

  47. I don’t have a problem with that comment so much as I have a problem with the “aren’t we so much smarter now?” implications that come attached to the comment. In 50 years we’ll be saying similar things about cell phones, but I don’t hear anyone pointing that out right now. At least the old telephone stayed in one place; if I was out, I was out and tough shit if I didn’t get your stupid urgent message in time.

    But now, don’t respond to the voice mail / text / email within 5 minutes and the world stops spinning. Yeah, that’s real progress.

  48. I think this is an introvert vs. extrovert thing. Introverts value “alone time” and resent intrusions, and therefore we tend to resent the telephone because it can be so intrusive. Extroverts celebrate social connection and actually crave interaction with other people, and therefore they tend to celebrate the telephone for its ability to connect people. Extroverts, as a rule, don’t understand introverts, and assume that we’re all a bunch of sociopaths. (Which is fine; because, maybe if they’re afraid that we’ll eat their liver with fava beans and a nice chianti, they’ll think twice before interrupting us when we want some peace and quiet.)

    Based on some of the comments here by defenders of the telephone, I think you may have the wrong impression of why some of us dislike the telephone so much. It’s not the technology per se that we dislike. I have no objection to having a device in my home, or even in my pocket, that allows instant two-way voice communication at a distance. The technology itself is actually kinda cool. What I resent is how that technology has affected the way people behave, and people’s attitudes about what sort of behavior is acceptable and expected. The ubiquity of the telephone has given people the notion that it’s okay to interrupt other people at virtually any time of the day for virtually any reason, with the assumption that the person you interrupted will drop whatever he or she is doing and engage you in conversation.

    I would have no problem at all with the telephone if people would treat a phone call as a substitute for an in-person visit. Since a phone call is nearly as intrusive as an in-person visit, the same rules of etiquette ought to apply. If you wouldn’t drop by someone’s home at a given time of morning or night, then you shouldn’t call them at that time of morning or night. If you wouldn’t drop by someone’s home or office just to tell them about X, then you probably shouldn’t call them just to tell them about X. If you wouldn’t conduct a particular piece of business in person, you probably shouldn’t try to conduct that business over the phone, either. If we would all agree that the purpose of the phone is to make life simpler by eliminating unnecessary or impractical in-person visits, I would have no problem with it. The problem I have with the phone is that, because it is so convenient, people don’t just use it as a substitute for an in-person visit; but, instead, they often use the phone in situations in which they would not make an in-person visit if they were able to. And lots of people don’t seem to realize that their phone calls can be intrusive or inconveniently timed, or that the person on the other end of the line may not like talking on the phone for various personal reasons: Perhaps they’re a bit hard of hearing; or perhaps they just don’t like trying to hold a conversation with a disembodied voice that is unable to communicate gestures, facial expressions, body language, or visual contextual clues.

    The problem with the telephone is not that it facilitates instant two-way voice communication at a distance. That’s actually a good thing. The problem is that the telephone creates the social expectation that each of us ought to be willing and eager to drop whatever we’re doing whenever the phone rings and engage the caller in a conversation on a topic of the caller’s choosing; and that anyone who does not actually enjoy doing this is somehow being rude or antisocial. THAT’s what I hate about the telephone.

    1. Absolutely. Telemarketers have ruined the telephone, the same way the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have ruined the doorbell, the same way that junk mail has ruined the regular mail, and that spam has ruined email.

      Once upon a time, all these things were useful tools for communication…no more. Now they are time-wasting inconveniences, best avoided as much as possible.

      1. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have ruined the doorbell

        I guess you’re too young for the Fuller Brush man or the Encyclopedia Britannica.

  49. So, we’ve gone from occasionally running to answer a bell ringing, to surrounding ourselves with technology in order to obsessively stay connected to everyone 24/7 so we don’t miss out on anything? I’m not sure where the improvement is.

  50. Man, the phone is an intrusion? You hate it when people visit?

    Are you folks sitting alone in your attics writing your writing over and over in your spiral bound notebooks, “All humans are unclean?”

    I’m not much of a phone talker and if I don’t want to answer my phone I don’t or I turn it off. But I can’t stand texting unless it’s something short and useful, like what time to meet.

    And I love when people drop by unexpectedly. Then again, I like human contact. I don’t see the idea of friends wanting to talk or spend time with me as an intrusion. But that’s just me. I grew up in an age when personally interacting with other people was all the rage.

  51. I have always told my family when the phone rings that it exists for our convenience, not the convenience of people calling us.

  52. I hate telephones too. Probably because I associate them with people who abuse them to annoy me. Of course they are preferable to spontaneous visits. Texting is a great way to avoid having to speak to someone, and limits the noise to signal ratio. I just wish there was a “tl;dr” equivalent for “if you didn’t understand a joke, please don’t ask me to try and explain it while typing with my thumbs, just ignore it and move on”.

  53. When my mom leaves me a voicemail she always tells me she’s my mom, and leaves me her number. After all that is said and done, maybe-possibly she might mention something about why she called — that is why voicemail sucks even worse than answering the damn phone to begin with.

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