Landschlacht, Switzerland, Sunday 10 February 2019
It has often been said that you can tell the age of a person by the music they remember.
This is true.
But I believe another surefire method for ascertaining a person’s age is their attitude towards digital technology.
In my never-ending quest to declutter my living space within our apartment to my wife’s impatient satisfaction, I stumbled across, in hard copy, an “old” editorial by Guardian writer Brigid Delaney.
Without a Google search, you, my gentle reader, can already ascertain that my collecting of old newspapers already defines me as an older man.
Without Googling Brigid’s name, I am certain that you can as well estimate her age group as well.
“In the summer of 2014, I bought my new iPhone and took it down to Bondi Beach, where sand got caught in one of the buttons on the side.”
Above: Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia
A new iPhone?
Does she mean she had an old iPhone before?
And why give yourself extra anxiety by bringing your phone to the beach where it can get lost or stolen?
Why not leave it at home or in your hotel room safe?
The world won’t end if you and your phone part company for a part of the day.
“As a result some mechanism broke, disabling the ring.
In four years it has not rung or vibrated.
It is constantly on silent.
I have to be staring at the screen, which brightens slightly, if anyone calls.”
She has not only had the same phone for four years but never bothered to have it fixed?
Why not?
Is she often staring at her phone screen waiting for it to brighten her day?
“And when it ‘rings’, I feel such a wave of animus and fear that I am unsettled for the rest of the day.
Usually I don’t answer it.”
I am sorry, but what?
You write for the Guardian.
There must be moments when you need to talk on the phone or need to be reached by phone.
When did the spoken word matter less than the written word?
In this age of impatient and intolerant communication, isn’t speaking on the phone faster than writing a text message?
When did talking on the phone cause her to become afraid?
“This week I was on a tram when someone called my phone.
The screen lit up slightly and I tensed.
It was a landline, an unknown number from Ringwood.
This freaked me out.
I let it ring, unsure whether to answer it, while racking my brain….
Who would call me on a landline?”
Above: Ringwood Clock Tower, Melbourne, Australia
Is Brigid one of those who, when sitting in a tram, stares down at her phone and sees nothing and no one around her?
How sad to be in the world and to see nothing of it!
I admit that I don’t always like unsolicited telephone calls but I don’t live in fear that I might get them.
Truth be told, I am not great at memorizing telephone numbers nor do I spend a lot of time inputting telephone numbers into my Smartphone’s memory, so there is a possibility that a friend could call whose number I won’t recognize.
I view a ringing phone as a potential for something pleasant rather than something to dread.
As well I am unable to let a phone ring without answering it.
My curiosity always compells me to pick it up before it stops ringing.
As for who would call Brigid on a landline….
That question makes me assume that she believes everyone has and uses exclusively some sort of mobile device and that it is inherently wrong and abnormal not to do so.
“WHO DO I KNOW IN RINGWOOD?
Did I owe someone money in Ringwood?
Had I made an appointment there?
Did someone I know work there and have access to a landline?
And if they had a landline why didn’t they text me first to warn me they would be ringing me from a landline?”
So much anxiety that she is SHOUTING!
Does she have a lifestyle wherein she regularly owes someone money?
Is she regularly delinquent when paying what she owes that the payee must ring her up to remind her of her obligations?
Does she regularly forget her appointments?
And, once again, she presumes that everyone has a mobile device with them even when they are using a landline.
She expects to be texted before she is phoned, as if the intended caller must seek permission from her in writing before phoning.
In my world I phone someone so I don’t have to write them.
“My phone kept ‘ringing’, my anxiety grew, and as the tram turned into Collins Street my instinct was to throw the phone onto the tracks.
I had a bad feeling about the call.
Who is this monster that would call me from a landline?
Who would be barbaric enough to want to TALK ON THE PHONE?”
Above: Collins Street tram, Melbourne, Australia
My gut reaction to Brigid here is….
First World problems, drama queen!
You are privileged to have a phone in a world where many do not.
As well, someone seeking to speak to you doesn’t mean their intentions are necessarily malevolent for wanting to do so.
Is she so close-minded that she cannot perceive a reality beyond her own, that how she prefers to communicate with the world and her reasons for doing so might not be shared by the rest of humanity?
“It went to voicemail – an abyss of hundreds of unchecked messages.
There are things going back years in my voicemail.
The messages pile up on one another like dirty plates.
To go through them would be to discover warnings and missed opportunities….
The call back for the job interview I missed….
The cheque undelivered….
The court summons or the friend unexpectedly in town after 20 years….
The worst is when I accidentally pocket dial 101 and some robotic female voice says:
‘You have 1,045 unchecked messages.’ ”
I find myself less and less sympathetic towards Brigid the more I read her column.
How insulting it is to think that someone is not important enough to even have their voicemail message listened to!
(Not to mention replied to….)
How arrogant it is to judge someone’s attempt to reach you as unworthy of attention if it isn’t done in the way you prefer!
You are a writer for a newspaper, Brigid, not a rock star or a politician.
“A week before the Ringwood landline call, I got a call from ‘number withheld’, which I decided to answer because if I didn’t it would trouble me for the rest of the day.
It was my mother.
‘WHY YOU NUMBER WITHHELD?”, I screeched.
‘WHY YOU DO THAT?’ ”
Here is where I must confess my technological ignorance.
I haven’t the slightest clue how to withhold my number from the person I am calling.
I have no idea why someone would choose to withhold their number when calling someone except perhaps the fear that someone would screen and reject the call if they knew who was calling and didn’t wish to speak to that person.
I have never done so nor anticipate ever wanting to do so.
As for Brigid’s mother having withheld her number, perhaps she felt Brigid would not answer her phone if she knew her mother was calling.
As to Brigid’s reaction, I am struck by a feeling of spoiled childish behaviour on her part.
“I knew that would be the last time I would speak to my mother on the phone – which was sad, but I never usually answer ‘number withheld’, as no good has ever come from speaking to a number withheld.
We have now migrated our communication to nonverbal forms – text and WhatsApp.”
I certainly don’t blame Brigid’s mother for wanting to avoid another screeching response to trying to talk to her daughter on the phone.
I find Brigid’s presumption that all numbers withheld are automatically to be ignored short-sighted and close-minded.
And as I have often argued in the past….
For every gain, for every technological innovation, there is a loss.
Email has rendered the love letter on the verge of extinction.
Text messages have made correct grammar and an extensive vocabulary unnecessary.
As for WhatsApp, I don’t enjoy the psychological pressure of having messages I have received recorded as read or unread by the sender.
The idea being that since I read your message I must clearly ASAP respond to that message.
When did I lose the option to choose?
What if I don’t want to respond?
What if I don’t want to, or feel I need to, respond right away?
“Calling someone from a withheld number or an unknown landline seems like an aggressive act.
It feels like an ambush.
And phone conversations themselves are often awkward – with people talking over the top of each other and desperately trying to end things politely.”
To Brigid’s first two remarks in this paragraph, she sounds like an incredibly paranoid person.
The unknown is not necessarily nor continously a threat.
In regards to her remarks about phone conversations being awkward….
If she rarely speaks on the phone, then how can she expect to be proficient at doing so?
And if you are not proficient at something, then is it any wonder you feel awkward doing it?
As for talking over one another in a phone conversation….
In my own phone conversational experience I see myself talking over the other person for two reasons usually unconnected to one another.
Either the other person is monopolizing the phone conversation and you realize you need to interrupt or speak over that person if you wish to have received what you wish to communicate.
Or the conversation is flowing so fast and furious that you feel you must speak before you forget what it is you wanted to say.
I end a phone conversation normally for only two reasons:
- I am worried about the expense of the call.
- Time and responsibility are not always my friends so even though I would like to keep talking I must ring off and do other things.
“The polite thing is to text first and say:
‘Can we talk on the phone?’ and ‘What is a good time to talk?’
That way the person is mentally prepared to take the call.
If you have to impart a whole lot of info that is too cumbersome to text, the WhatsApp voice message is an excellent walkie-talkie style thing.
WhatsApp Messages are better than 101, because you know who is calling you and the message is just like a lazy person’s text message or a very short podcast made by a friend.”
As a polite Canadian, I am all about doing the diplomatic thing, and the idea of texting before phoning, to mentally brace that person for your call, does have its merits.
But this also strikes me as a kind of joyless, lacking-in-spontaneity, way of living.
I like surprising and being surprised by unexpected calls with loved ones with no forewarning.
Hearing the dulcet tones of their voices out of the blue causes my heart to skip a beat in unanticipated delight and makes a smile appear upon my face.
And not knowing beforehand who is ringing you is part of the adventure of living.
Certainly there may be some callers you don’t wish to speak to, but then again there may be callers who will enhance your day.
As for making a podcast type message my ego is not so insecure that it needs a Hollywood or YouTube production to express my desire to speak with you.
“Phone calls are tedious time sucks – with banks, with your energy provider.
You are on hold, you have been put in a queue, you have to pick from a menu, you have to enter your banking ID on the keypad, you have to enter your date of birth, you have to remember your password, you have to speak to someone far away about your Internet modem.
To speak on the phone is to endure the ignomity of being shunted around a dozen different teams and put on hold.”
My automatic answer is first and foremost:
First World problems, Princess.
Part of adult living is waiting and queuing and making choices and supplying information and explaining to other people what it is you need and want.
No one is suggesting that you must like these duties but for every gain there is a loss.
The convenience of not having to physically meet face-to-face with your banker or service provider must needs be then offset by time and effort being sacrificed in another way.
And the more complex and specific the problem, the longer it will necessarily take to find the person who can provide a solution.
“And talking on the phone to friends is like being half there.
Increasingly when I do talk to friends on the phone, they are doing something else while they are talking.
They are cooking dinner or doing the shopping or browsing on the Internet.
I hear the click of the keys in the background, as they say ‘uh-huh, uh-huh’. ”
As to the being half there, I must chalk this up to, what old farts like me refer to as, the increasing impropriety of society as time progresses.
Or to put it another way….
We are a ruder generation than our predecessors.
I am reminded of an old Biblical adage that suggests that no one can serve two gods at the same time.
If someone calls me unexpectedly and I am in the middle of something that needs doing or completing urgently then I politely suggest to them that their call is appreciated but as they deserve my complete and undivided attention I request a pre-arranged opportunity in the future to give them that deserved attention undisturbed.
If you make the effort to phone me, then you deserve my respectful and complete attention.
Life is meant to be lived with passion, to be lived in the moment.
Milking a moment for all its worth means giving yourself totally to that moment.
Cook with passion.
Shop with passion.
Browse the Internet with passion.
Be in the moment.
But it is impossible to devote equal amounts of passion to two or more activities happening simultaneously.
So, on the phone, passionately be on the phone.
Focus only on that conversation.
Be in the moment.
“The only time that talking on the phone is fruitful is for the pure discussion of ideas.
Running something by an editor or refining a concept is hard to do by text and laborious by email.
Better to hash things out with voices so that an idea becomes infected with the different perspectives.”
Not certain I agree with you, Brigid, about the pure discussion of ideas being the only time that talking on the phone is fruitful.
The sharing of emotions is far more powerful by phone than any text message or email could ever be.
“Of course, face to face is the best.
But it is time we phased phone calls out the way we did handwritten letters.
They served their purpose.
And now they are obsolete and terrifying.”
I agree that face-to-face encounters are the best, but I cannot agree with banning phone calls.
Phone calls still have a purpose and an important role to play in both business and society.
For every gain there is a loss.
Handwritten letters may have been laborious to write but the confessional nature and the full flower of expression allowed the letter writer to fully demonstrate how he/she was feeling and most of all they were a delight to find in one’s postal box.
And it is not completely true that handwritten letters have been made redundant.
They are still around and are still exchanged between people who desire to show their passion for one another.
In regards to the telephone’s fear factor, perhaps the real problem is not the existence of phone calls as it is Brigid’s inability to see beyond her paranoia or to perceive that, to paraphrase Shakespeare, there is more in Heaven and Earth than has been dreamt in Brigid’s philosophy.
Above: William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
The problem with technology, whether old or new, is not with the technology itself, but rather how it is abused, misused and utilized by the people who employ that technology.
Has Brigid ever received a love letter?
Has she ever really tried to use a telephone as it is intended?
On Bondi Beach or on the Collins Street tram, did she ever look up from her phone and experience real life off-screen?
Finally, I have to ask how Brigid defines purpose.
We live in a time where too many people believe that everything must be planned and scheduled beforehand.
But it is the unpredictable incidents between official events that add up to a life, the incalculable that gives it value.
The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured “purposeless” time in between.
New timesaving technologies make workers more productive and less free in a world that is acclerating around us.
The rhetoric of efficiency around our technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued.
That those vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more productive or faster paced.
We have become a generation that feels we must traverse distances with all possible speed, especially through electronic transmissions that make real travel less necessary.
Time saved by technology could be lavished on daydreams and memories and thoughts and simple observation, for these things have their purpose.
We have become eclipsed by the very technologies that were supposed to liberate us.
The random, the unscreened, allows you to find what you didn’t know you were looking for.
You are not really living if life is not allowed to surprise you.
Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Brigid Delaney, “We need to ban phone calls“, The Guardian, 23 August 2018 / Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Building Everest 