We’re Far More Connected Than Our Parents

It didn’t do much, except what it was supposed to do — make and receive voice calls.

I recently ran across the first telephone I remember in our house. It’s an Automatic Electric Type 80, modeled on the iconic Western Electric Model 500 and was one of millions produced between the 1950s and 1970s. Back then, telephone equipment was leased from the service provider, in our case, GTE.

The first service I remember was a party line — we shared a “line” with nearby families. Each “party” along the line had their own number so that only their phone would ring when called, but there was no way of knowing if someone was already on the line if you were going to make a call, for instance. Other than good manners, there was also no way of preventing someone from listening in on a conversation that wasn’t theirs.

We used that same phone when we got a private line, sometime in the mid-60s. (A lot of things happened around the same time down Highland Lane — the road was paved [for a couple of miles from Deep Draw]; we joined the municipal water system (got “city water”); we got private telephone lines; and the first lots in Highland View, “the subdivision”, were developed.) My parents added an Automatic Electric Type 90 — the wall version of the Type 80 — in the kitchen/dining room of the 1968 addition to our house.

Privacy was always an issue when using the telephone in those days, even with a private line. The telephone was shared by a family and was usually in a common area of the house. A longer cord could help you get away a little, maybe even behind a closed door. But maybe not. And if you had several telephones in the house, connected to the same number, there was always the risk that someone could listen on an extension.

The ultimate back then was having a separate number, which showed up as “teenager phone” in the phone book. I never had a separate number but did manage to get the bedroom where that original black Type 80 had been relocated. It felt like a private phone and number, kind of — there was no way of knowing when someone would pick up the other phone, innocently or not.

After high school I was in situations where a bunch of us shared a phone, like in a dormitory. I never got many calls — I largely lived around the people I hung out with so I was around them most of the time. But likewise, I didn’t particularly enjoy answering the phone for other people, knowing the odds were low that the call was for me.

I was introduced to international long distance when I was stationed at RAF Lakenheath, U.K., in the early 1980s. International long distance was more complicated in the early 1980s, and cell phones were non-existent. Some of my fire department buddies would use a line in the fire department’s alarm room (communications center) to call back to the States. Others would use a phone room set up by base MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) for international calls.

I don’t think I ever used either one. I got a letter from my mother once while I was at Lakenheath with a dime and a pencil taped to the sheet of paper. “Use one or the other, but please use one,” the note said. I wrote a letter.

I remember putting an answering machine on the phone at the small newspaper office where I worked in the mid-late 1980s, to catch calls when we were all out of the office (we were not a large staff) and after hours. Man, would people complain about “talking to a machine.” We were vigilant about returning calls but it didn’t stop the complaints.

Then the caller ID boxes came out (somebody figured out that this information, which was always available in the telephone company’s switching equipment, could be monetized.) I liked caller ID — it’s changed the way I use the phone.

In the late 1990s, I worked for a company that produced trade shows and published magazines in the telecommunications arena. One magazine covered the emergence of prepaid phone cards. Another covered, at first, the payphone industry, which was already threatened by the rise of cellular phones and changes in the regulatory structure brought on by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. We shifted that magazine’s focus to covering the new regulatory landscape and the telecom boom. I wondered then how a lot of the new companies were making money, especially compared to how they were valued. Turns out they weren’t making any money and the telecom “bubble” burst around the turn of the century.

We’ve seen our phone devices become powerful handheld computers. The smart phone in your pocket has more processing power than NASA used to put men on the moon. Those phones, along with social media, connect us in a way not possible — for better or worse —just a few decades ago.

I read an advice column not long ago where a writer was bemoaning that she’d gone on a date with a man who’d looked up and read some of her published stuff. She’d written what she called “personal” essays for some pretty well-known publications, which in her mind (and her date’s) created an information imbalance. The writer said that her date had a sense of fairness and offered up more personal information about himself than he ordinarily might have. As a writer the column gave me pause, but then I realized how silly the whole thing was. You can’t put things out there and not expect any backlash.

Then I considered myself on the opposite side. I’ve always been amazed at what I can put together about a person based solely on what they’ve VOLUNTARILY posted on social media. It seems invasive but not only is the information public, it’s public because the person made the decision to make it so. And the question becomes — how much do I reveal when I talk in real life to someone I’ve followed on social media?

I like the idea of going back to the black Automated Electric Type 80 desk phone with rotary dial. I could do it — but I want caller ID.

rpdgraham@gmail.com