Imagine: a world where phones are our masters

MANY of the inventions with which we surround ourselves have changed very little over the years. I am reminded of this every time I visit my local library, where an ancient sewing machine is on display – in spite of being more than a century old.

And lavishly decorated in patterns and scrolls, it still does what a modern sewing machine does. It sews. Only the shape has changed. It has a hand crank where modern machines have electric motors, but I think the mechanical parts would be quite familiar to a modern sewing machine mechanic.

Telephones, on the other hand, have changed beyond all recognition within a single lifetime. I think with amazement about the different phones that have served my family since I was a child.

For much of my childhood, telephones were made of wood and attached to the wall. They had a crank handle to turn when you wanted to communicate with the rest of the world. The handle alerted the “operator” who could connect you with whoever you wished to speak to.

The first phones I remember had a fixed mouthpiece and an earphone on a cord. You held the earpiece to your ear and spoke into the mouthpiece. This posed a problem to short people, and there was usually a chair close the the telephone so kids could stand tall enough to speak into the contraption when Granny called.

This model was replaced over the years by table models in a variety of shapes and finally by mobile and cordless phones.

Telephones have changed our lives dramatically – and not always for the better. Those old wooden phones screwed to the wall were our servants. Today we are the servants of our phones.

Our parents had a certain amount of freedom from electronic interruption. You only had to go for a walk in the garden to be out of reach of callers (“You tried to call me? Oh, I was weeding the garden.”) If your call was unanswered you accepted the fact and tried again later.

If you didn’t answer people just accepted you were somewhere else. Now we carry our smartphones wherever we go and callers become quite indignant if we don’t answer immediately.

I’m not sure this is an improvement to our lifestyle. Do we really need to be available at all times? On the loo? Having an afternoon nap? In the shower?

The problem is that modern phones do much more than communicate. They take photographs, predict the weather, provide music, show us the shortest route and the state of our bank account.

Maybe a practical change to our tele-lifestyle would be to install an app that turns off any form of communication – SMS, WhatsApp, Twitface, chatsapp and the rest, and keeps the interesting things switched on. I wonder whether there is one like that.

Last Laugh

Charlie and Fred were in the pub philosophising as usual.

“You know,” said Charlie, “as we get older three things happen to us us. First, the memory starts to fade.”

There was a long pause until Fred said: “And the other two?”

“Other two what?”