
An Elegy for the Landline in Literature - tintinnabula
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-elegy-for-the-landline-in-literature
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NotGargarin
I would say that a smartphone is not quite so reliable as this author seems to
think. Batteries and signal fail all the time, for one. The drama that can be
created with smartphones is at least as much as that created with a landline.
Text messages, for example: what about a message half written and accidentally
sent, or the sending of a risky text and seeing a long typing indicator before
recieving just "OK", or perhaps an unsent message left to be rediscovered a
day or so later, after everything has changed? Or with calls: the
embarrassment of realising too late that you're on speaker, or calling a
hundred times and hearing only "the number you are calling is not available"
(why? Is it no signal, have they turned off their phone?), or even just
getting a call from an unknown number, which has all the mystery of a call
from a landline. Even caller ID has drama: why are _they_ calling at this
hour? Is the person on the phone the same as the caller ID? Social media adds
so much, too. Is it Facebook, where you're friends with your parents, or
Snapchat, with just your friends? Is it a public post, or a select group?
There's so much scope for drama, and we're seeing more and more use of it in
modern writing.

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gumby
I read an article a few years ago about how authors have had to restructure
stories because so many plots have hinged around people being out of touch
except when at known locations. A lot of mystery/misunderstanding of plots
(think: PG Wodehouse) no longer works.

I was struck by this article (within the last decade) as mobile phones and
texting have been ubiquitous since the mid 90s (early 00s in the US). Funny
that popular literature took a while to catch up.

Detective stories survive this the best (nothing is “real-time”) and
historical fiction (no phones in Ancient Rome).

Ironically this traces a thread of literature. “The Moonstone” by Wilkie
Collins was the first mystery story and also the first technologically
“modern” story as it was the first in which people could telegraph to London
and have a detective arrive by train later in the day! Still a great novel
even though Collins has gone from the height of fame (Far more more famous
than his contemporary Dickens) to obscurity today. Like the telegraph and
landline.

~~~
sophacles
> I was struck by this article (within the last decade) as mobile phones and
> texting have been ubiquitous since the mid 90s (early 00s in the US). Funny
> that popular literature took a while to catch up.

I've mused about this a bit myself, it's and interesting topic. I've never
reached a conclusion, but some of the factors I consider to be important:

* The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed. (william gibson) There are many people my age (40) who didn't really have cell phones until the last 10-15 years. It's like cord-cutting: I haven't had cable in 20 years, neither have many of my tech friends, but a lot of folks seem to have only caught on en mass in the last few years. Similarly cell phone usage being ubiquitous in my techy peer group may not represent everyone, true ubiquity may be much newer.

* Related to the above, there's the tech phase in period. Once cell phones became ubiquitous, it's not like it instantly changed the habits and modes of thinking of those folks immediately. Between the limited number of talk minutes back in the old days, and the true ubiquity of landlines, cell phones were seen as an accessory, a secondary communication method. This still remains true institionally: you'll find lots of forms that ask about landline vs cell, or assume landline is the primary phone number, etc.

This also includes the notion of: we had to figure out how to use this tech. I
don't mean it in the way of "how do i press the right buttons" but rather
"what's the socially correct way to use this thing?" Is it OK to take a call
in public? What's the expected response window for a txt? How does that
prioritize with calls? What is polite on txt (which used to have a 140char
limit per message that cost $.05 to send), and so on.

* There's some form of inertia involved. The telephone changed details, but not the fundamental idea that a person's reachability was tied to location. I mean, a telephone number went to a phone in a specific room (not strictly true, but close enough). Until the cell phone, this had been true forever, so millenia of story structure and concepts are built around it. Everyone was (and honestly still is) used to the idea and had built a lot of understanding around it. That understanding takes a little while to change, and if it's the only thing you've ever known, it may take a long while. Conversely, writers who grew up with mobile as the primary communication method and understand it as a core idea are only just now getting to the point where they are able to produce good stuff - there's still the learning/experience curve for writing.

I think that last point could be rewritten pithily as: write what you know.

* Finally, since story structure that has existed forever is broken by cell phones - it's possible that writers just needed to observe the world a bit to see how the conflicts changed as a result. Sometimes it can be fixed by patches "oh we can't do a search here, they have cell phones"... becomes "oh the battery is dead, do a search!". Other times the structure is just broken and must be abandoned. New structures can probably be invented, but that's hard.

Anyway, I don't know if the answers are in the above, but it's a fun topic.

~~~
ghaff
It's a great point about habits. It probably took me a surprisingly long time
before it became second nature to make a note on my phone (or more likely just
take a picture) to remember something rather than make a note on a piece of
paper. And I still sometimes find myself carrying around paper or plastic
cards or copies of information that really aren't critical and could just as
easily be a photo on my phone.

I suppose there's a downside to _everything_ being dependent on your phone but
for non-critical stuff, it makes sense.

And it takes time to get comfortable. I gave up my landline fairly recently
after deliberately avoiding using it at all for about 6 months--well, except
once when Internet failed. But I finally decided that, while it can be
somewhat higher quality and was something of a backup (though it was still
from the cable co), it just wasn't worth $40/month as a backup.

ADDED:

>you'll find lots of forms that ask about landline vs cell, or assume landline
is the primary phone number, etc.

This is one of my minor annoyances about giving up my landline. I really don't
like giving out my cellphone number at random. For work stuff, I just give out
my office number which doesn't even have a phone attached :-) But there is
some personal stuff where I don't necessarily want to give out an entirely
fake number but I don't want them calling my cell either.

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ghaff
There are so many examples. In SF many of Connie Willis' stories revolved
around constantly missed connections as someone ran around trying to find
someone else. The film Play It Again Sam had a running gag in which one of the
characters was constantly calling and giving a phone number about where he was
at the moment. Anything written today that depends on a "missed connection"
has to explain why someone couldn't just make a cell call (or otherwise do a
search and reach someone).

~~~
brazzy
I think I've seen it pointed out several times how absolutely bizarre the use
of landlines and lack of cell phones is to young readers of _Neuromancer_ \-
even leaving them wondering whether there is some deeper meaning behind that.

~~~
bitwize
I remember _Max Headroom_ successfully predicting video telecommunications,
but it resembled a 1980s telephone with a screen. There were even "View-Phone"
booths on street corners. Also -- CRTs everywhere.

Some of this was probably deliberate; the show depicted computer consoles with
ancient purely-mechanical typewriters. But still, I interpret the tagline
"Twenty minutes into the future" as something of a _disclaimer_.

~~~
at-fates-hands
I have a 1986 Playboy and in the "Tech Section" there is a image of a "video
phone" which was basically a landline phone setup with a tiny 5" B&W screen
with an image of the person you were talking to and it was hailed as the
future of communications.

Behold, the Luma Telecom Video Telephone:

Looks like a press release from 1986:
[https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/04/22/Luma-Telecom-Inc-
has...](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/04/22/Luma-Telecom-Inc-has-broken-
through-the-high-cost-barrier/4751514530000/)

If you wanted some pics: [https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-
mitsubishi-lu...](https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-mitsubishi-
luma-video-phone-works)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/fujipc/4578540563](https://www.flickr.com/photos/fujipc/4578540563)

~~~
rsynnott
Even weirder, things like this were still being marketed this century:
[https://www.theregister.com/2004/09/15/amstrad_e3_launch/](https://www.theregister.com/2004/09/15/amstrad_e3_launch/)

~~~
brazzy
Well, that was 3 years before the launch of the iPhone. It totally made sense
at that time.

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neonate
[https://archive.is/Cm90Y](https://archive.is/Cm90Y)

