Is it still considered a phone
Are our phones really still a phone?
It began in 1854 when Alexander Graham Bell got a patent for the telephone. He felt the telephone should be answered by saying 'ahoy' but thank goodness his friend, Thomas Edison, suggested saying 'hello'.
Some of us may remember when we used to dial up the operator, she would connect our call or as Ernestine (from Laugh-In, 1968) would say ... One ringy-dingy ~ A gracious good morning to you, is this the party to whom I am speaking. Or even better, was the party line, where you could pick up the phone and hear another person's conversation, but you couldn't make a call until they completed their call.
We then had a telephone mounted usually on the kitchen wall with a 20' cord. The telephone would ring, and we would answer it. Then we would walk into another room stretching the cord as far as we could ~ eventually the cord would never re-coil back up. The telephone was an exciting and fun object. It would ring and we wouldn't know who was calling until we answered it ~ what a surprise that could be 😀 Another fun game was calling other people and hanging up because just as you didn't know who called ~ neither did they. Or we would do prank calls... We would dial a number, maybe a grocery store and ask ~ 'Do you have Prince Albert in a can?' They would respond 'Yes' and we would laughingly say 'Well let him out.' May not seem funny now but back then we thought it was hysterical 😂
As technology changed so did our telephones. For one thing telephones became phones and more importantly they became mobile without a 20' cord. The first so-called mobile phones went on sale in 1983 for nearly $4,000.00. Sure, at first, they were stationary in our vehicle, but it wasn't long before they were mobile in a bag aka 'bag phone'. But it was harder for your phone to get a signal if you were moving which kinda defeats the purpose of a mobile phone if you have to stop to get a signal. 'Can you hear me now' ~ we have all uttered those words at one time or another. From there phones just got smaller and more mobile. In fact, our phones have more computing power than the computer used for the Apollo 11 moon landing.
We have become a society of nomophobia's ~ the sever anxiety caused by the thought or act of losing our phones or running out of battery. Because 90% of adults have their phones at arm's reach at all times which may explain why 1.8 million people have dropped their phones in the toilet~ by the way mobile phones are dirtier than toilet handles, maybe that's because they fell in the toilet 📵🚽 You may think this is the reason behind waterproof/resistant phones, but you would be wrong. Waterproof/resistant phones came about because youngsters like to always have their phones with them ~ even in the shower. Yea, that one is a real head scratcher for me📱🚿
Our phones have replaced so many other everyday items in our lives. They are our alarm clocks, encyclopedias ~ hello Google, road maps ~ Siri, Alexa and/or Google maps ~ where is the nearest post office. But wait we don't need a post office anymore and email didn't garner a quick enough response, so now we text. Home movies have been replaced by Tik Tok or various other apps and photo albums are no more ~ we have Instagram and Facebook. And just how do we obtain these videos or pictures? You guessed it, with our phones. And sometimes, some of us can be quite carless with our desire for the perfect selfies ~ more folks die from trying to get that perfect selfie and shark attacks. 📱📵🦈
Our phones have come a long way. But I'm wondering if the definition of a telephone is… a system for transmitting voices over a distance using wire or radio by converting vibration to electrical signals. Yet, we use our phones for just about everything BUT talking, so is it still considered a phone, or should we be calling it by another name. Danger Zone, TMI (Too much information), Drama Device, Comedy Central ~ what would you call your phone?
Peace & Love