
The Death of the Telephone Call: 1876–2007 - Hooke
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_next_20/2016/09/what_s_lost_when_telephone_calls_disappear.html
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tacostakohashi
I think this is another example of popularity and commoditization eventually
destroying something.

First, telephones start out as expensive, only available in big cities. I'm
not old enough to remember this, but I suspect it would have been an exclusive
and prestigious club.

Eventually, telephones get widespread, and cheaper - I'm thinking like mid
90s, before mobile phones became mass market. This was "peak telephone", and
it's what I remember from my youth. It was actually pretty good! As the author
says, you could casually call your friends without seeming intrusive or
clingy, and you could call most business or government agencies and talk to
staff, getting quick responses to inquiries from knowledgeable people. Towards
the end of this era, you have lots of information lines for time, weather,
movies, phone banking services, etc.

Around this time, call centers are introduced - if you call a business or
government agency, you don't end up talking to some knowledgeable subject
matter expert about some topic, you talk to a call center operator who has a
script, and if it's anything non-trivial, tries to transfer you, call back, or
generally mess you around.

At this point, the phone network is so cheap, with so many subscribers that
the temptation to abuse it to sell things to people is irresistible. Robo-
dialling, answering machines, caller ID, and the Do Not Call registry are all
introduced to the system, in a nuisance call arms race between callers and
callees.

The call centers go to India, and the Philippines. The call center operators
get placed behind a interactive voice response system (IVR). Now, it's pretty
much impossible to get anything useful done by phone. Landlines are
disconnected, people have voice numbers on their mobile devices, but refuse to
answer calls from numbers that aren't in their address book.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the fundamental nature of communications
networks - the story isn't much different for postal mail, fax, email, usenet,
facebook. Success seems to kill the network in the end.

~~~
aikah
> but refuse to answer calls from numbers that aren't in their address book.

I do that. If I don't know the number and that person really wants to talk to
me, there is my answer machine where he/she can leave a message. I will never
answer a call from a number I do not know, whatever the reason. If it is
urgent, the person has to leave a message, so I can call him/her back. Why ?
because I get spammed X times a day with numbers from unknown origins. The
worst is masked numbers off course.

~~~
tormeh
Be wary of assuming that answer machines will be used. I'm 26 and I've never
used an answer machine. Maybe accidentally. I'm probably not going to leave
you a message because really few people listens to the message. I'm certainly
not going to listen to a message someone leaves me. This is what SMS is for, I
think.

~~~
Sinergy2
I don't comprehend the thinking behind not listening to voicemails. Why have a
voicemail box, then? You're just making anybody who does leave a voicemail
think you're ignoring them on purpose. Is it people who didn't purposefully
purchase and setup the voicemail feature, but it was automatically enabled?

~~~
tormeh
Some operators have it as default - that's how I got one before. I think
operators have stopped doing this now, at least where I live, so it's not a
problem anymore.

------
ddebernardy
Not sure what the author is on about.

In the B2B world at least, phone remains customers' preferred way to get more
info prior to a sale and to get support afterwards. The same for B2C - at
least on the support end of things, and provided you can readily talk to a
human.

Also, analog phone calls are dead. But voice conversations are here to stay
IMHO. There are plenty of "non-phone" alternatives to do those, e.g. Skype or
using /call in Slack to sort out in 3-5 min what would take 15+ min to sort
out in writing using texts or chats. Voice is just faster.

~~~
nitrogen
_Voice is just faster._

As someone who grew up more immersed in the digital world than the average, I
want to point out that this isn't a universal truth. With practice, concise
and clear text can convey more accurate and more useful information than a
low-SNR vocal conversation.

~~~
arjie
It's not about transferred information fidelity, it's about short feedback
loops, the ability to interrupt, and the knowledge (on both sides) of
attention.

Since concise and clear statements can be made in both media, the difference
is entirely in the limitations of the transport medium, and written text lacks
all of the characteristics I earlier mentioned.

~~~
nitrogen
The ability to interrupt is what I most _dislike_ about voice.
IRC/IM/Slacj/HipChat/whatever can provide just as short of a feedback cycle,
and people can be inattentive in voice calls as well, which is a greater waste
of time due to their synchronous nature.

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Spooky23
The numbers used here don't really make the case. A text message is a
conversation element, a call is a conversation.

I spent 4 hours on the phone Friday, on 5 calls. I also sent a couple dozen
texts. According to the article, I'm not a phone user.

~~~
morganvachon
> _The numbers used here don 't really make the case._

I got that impression too. I think a better metric would be minutes spent
talking compared to text messages sent. Even then, I can talk about a lot more
in a minute of voice than I can in even five minutes of texting, given the lag
between messages.

The article is riding the line between absurdity and parody.

------
WalterBright
I've found that phone is far more effective at resolving disagreements than
email/text. For serious disagreements, meeting face to face for a beer works
best.

~~~
ktRolster
_I 've found that phone is far more effective at resolving disagreements than
email/text._

People who are better at talking in person tend to feel this way. Others are
better at emailing (I am like this, it gives me time to clarify my thoughts,
and delete the petty insults), and think the opposite.

The only time I prefer to see face-to-face is when I need to build a
relationship of trust with the person, and it's easier for some people (like
you) to see that I am not ripping them off.

~~~
jameshart
People who are better at emailing often overestimate how good other people are
at reading emails.

~~~
kristjansson
This is a far bigger problem than some here might think. I write emails now on
the assumption that the recipient might read the first two sentences, skim the
first two paragraphs, and ignore the rest.

~~~
beardicus
They should teach this in business school. I never write my boss an email more
than three sentences long. I never ask two questions in one email, unless I
don't mind one of them being ignored.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Surely they do teach just that?

Whenever I write a report I always put the summary first because that is all
that anyone who trusts me needs to read. The rest is supporting information
and extended arguments in favour of the proposition that I make in the summary
together with some notes about why alternatives are no good.

Of course, I never went to business school, I'm an engineer who started as a
physicist.

------
foofoo55
A typical short phone call has a few items of back & forth equal to a good
number of texts. So for text to surpass phone calls, I think the ratio needs
to be much higher than 1:1, maybe something like 8:1. So the "death" date gets
pushed further out, but it's still there somewhere.

I agree that mobile voice quality is terrible on most phones, especially when
people choose to make their calls on speakerphone for some reason. At work we
have landlines and actual desk phones with hard-wired headsets because the
call quality is amazing compared to mobile. It lets you have a fully nuanced,
tonal, relaxed conversation with everything but the facial expressions and
hand gestures.

~~~
chungy
> especially when people choose to make their calls on speakerphone for some
> reason

You make it sound so mysterious. Speaking for myself, I do it for long
conversations because it's actually painful to keep the phone held to my ear
for that long.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Phones used to be shaped so it was comfortable to do so. It was quite a useful
feature.

~~~
rootusrootus
Yes! I have many times complained about what happened to phone ergonomics. It
started with cordless phones. The old corded handsets had a nice design with a
deep cup for your ear, and they were pleasant to talk on. The cordless phones
were bricks, and as often as not the earpiece actually stuck out a bit. Very
uncomfortable, and of course with the size requirements of cell phones it's
gotten even worse.

~~~
tgb
On the contrary, it's now cheap and simple to use a mic on a pair of
headphones and be completely free of any burden.

------
anexprogrammer
I'm not writing it off yet.

 _More_ of my friends are calling than in 2007 when it was texting, IM and
then the mass rush to Facebook. Quite a few are now cutting down Facebook, a
couple have left completely.

Maybe it's an age thing, but I find a 30 min call much more effective at
"topping up the friendship" than any number of minutes online chat. I had a
very early ICQ, and no end of IM since, but since smart phones the
fragmentation has got so ridiculous I rarely bother. I think I'd need to
install about 10 with 2-5 contacts in each to cover most and miss everyone
using iMessage of course (never did understand why Apple didn't release for
multiple platforms).

~~~
seanp2k2
They didn't support multiple platforms for the same reason Blackberry's BBM
was a Blackberry exclusive; platform lock-in. I have iMessage and I love using
it with people I text regularly. It still works for SMS, but it's a degraded
experience. There are tons of other options now, but I still use iMessage the
most since it's the best-integrated messenger on iOS, and they'll keep it that
way with things like private APIs + total control over the App Store.

~~~
ralfd
I wish instead of lasers and magic ink Apple would add group chat iMessage
(and conference calls to Facetime).

~~~
kccqzy
Group chat is already there since iOS 5 in the very beginning.

------
personlurking
I'd like it if audio were on the way up. On WhatsApp I send lots of audio
messages but the amount I get back in return is small. It's so much easier to
hit record than to try and type on a tiny virtual keyboard. Text is great for
my laptop, short or long audios, for my phone. No calls, though.

Actually, I find audio messages more like writing, in that one can think about
what they want to say and there's no pressure to say something "right this
moment", as with a telephone call. Likewise, the person receiving the audio
message can listen to it when it suits them.

~~~
kilroy123
Same here. I moved abroad and everyone here uses whatsapp. Voice recordings
are extremely common and popular.

I just wish slack added the same feature, so I can drop a recording into a
channel, instead of typing a wall of text.

------
microcolonel
I have my Nokia still going strong; but sadly they're killing the last GSM
network in Canada next year and I won't have anything to connect it to. I like
telephone calls a lot of the time, I use them about as often as text messages.

Next year I might need to buy a phone which is about 12 times as expensive,
has worse signal reliability, and which has a battery which will last me
literally one 14th the time my current one does, and which will take up about
twice the space in my pocket, and it will be a shattering liability every time
I take it with me. All the while, it will have so much software on it and so
much attack surface that I will need to stay abreast of hundreds upon hundreds
of megabytes of updates twice a month (at least) just so that people don't
commit fraud with my identity.

Seriously, screw this noise, get me out of here.

~~~
chrisbolt
Or you could just get another dumbphone:
[http://www.rogers.com/web/link/wirelessBuyFlow?forwardTo=Pho...](http://www.rogers.com/web/link/wirelessBuyFlow?forwardTo=PhoneThenPlan&productType=normal&productId_Detailed=Z222BLU)

~~~
microcolonel
People report a lot of battery issues for those. I'd probably want a Nokia.

~~~
pilsetnieks
Well then get a new Nokia dumbphone:
[https://www.microsoft.com/en/mobile/phones/all#order_by=late...](https://www.microsoft.com/en/mobile/phones/all#order_by=latest).

------
jameshart
_Somebody_ is using phones to make calls. Usually it's the guy in the big
Chevy SUV behind me weaving from side to side on the carriageway. If phone
calls were really dying I wouldn't see so many parents pulling out of school
dropoff with a phone clamped to their ear. Who are these people calling? Each
other? Or are they all answering calls from robodiallers?

------
grecy
Interestingly, I worked at a Telco from 2011-2015, granted, a rural one in
North America.

In all honesty, without a shadow of a lie, the master strategy of the VP of
Technology was to get a fax line into every home and business....... in 2015.

Oh yes, they really can be that clueless.

~~~
ddebernardy
Fax is still a growth market in the US, or at least was as late as last year
if a chap in that market I interacted with then is anything to go by. He was
working on a fax sending API. The stuff couldn't go by signed email or
anything of the sorts because of some administrative and (medical) insurance
related paperwork if memory serves.

~~~
Spooky23
That's a feature of the absurdity of compliance checkboxes.

If the auditor is an idiot, you can get a moderate finding for doing things
like applying a security patch that isn't FIPS validated, or similar nonsense.

------
rmason
I think the author tries too hard to make his point. If I have a chat with
someone and send thirty messages he's counting that as thirty conversations vs
one phone call.

A much fairer way is to look at how many times you speak with your friends via
text vs calling them. I find that I have many small text conversations but
when we get together by phone it's usually a long conversation of thirty
minutes or more.

I do not think the telephone call is going away. When a majority of smart
phones sold only allow texting is when I will believe it. I do think that the
landline phone sadly is going to become an endangered species, I will regret
losing mine it's my secret weapon.

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morganvachon
That's the most hyperbole I've ever seen in a single article. I had to stop
reading when I got to "The final voice mail that anybody actually heard was
recorded sometime around 2009". I get that it was meant as a joke, like much
of the exaggeration in the piece, but it's just too much.

------
psyc
I didn't send my first text until 2008, but once I did, voice calls were dead
to me.

------
crooked-v
Yet another article whining about kids these days.

------
douche
Good riddance. Telephone calls are awful.

2007 was also, incidentally, the last time I had a telephone that actually
functioned decently as a telephone - the venerable Nokia brickphone. Since
then, I've had nothing but grief with terrible signal, mics and speakers that
cut out intermittently, and antennas that cannot pick up towers that are in
line-of-sight with smartphones. They are, however, lovely for doing email and
texting, which have the additional benefit of leaving behind a persistent
paper trail so that there is an actual record of what is said that can be
referred to later.

~~~
lostlogin
>leaving behind a persistent paper trail so that there is an actual record of
what is said that can be referred to later./< Isn't this sometimes a good
reason to make phone calls?

~~~
douche
Fortunately I'm not involved in anything shady that would make records of that
kind a liability. Good thing, too; I've got terrible auditory memory, half the
time things I hear just go poof into the ether 30 seconds later without
lodging anywhere in my brain.

~~~
keithpeter
The ephemeral nature of a voice call is not only an advantage for questionable
activities.

You can defuse a potential conflict by voice call because the medium allows
airing of issues in a more candid fashion, and allows more rapid convergence
onto common ground compared to text based communication.

I think that bad news is best communicated along channels that allow some kind
of non-verbal perception (on a phone call largely by judging the nature and
length of the silences). Face to face is best, but synchronous voice
communication is a second best.

~~~
seanp2k2
Not sure how common this is outside of the valley, but Google Hangouts and
other video conferencing solutions work pretty well too. Maybe not so much
Hangouts because the video quality is terrible, but it + chromebox for
meetings is so much cheaper than previous solutions which required 8u of rack
space for a video processor and server that it's totally worth it.

