The Evolution of Communication
I got to thinking about how much telecommunications have evolved in the last 60 years.
I remember growing up with the old hang-on-the-wall kitchen phones and tabletop models that were in nearly every average household. On the farm, we still had a party line that we shared with all of our, not so nice, neighbors.
My father, who was rarely a nice person on a good day, would always rant and rave about the local neighbors who would stay on the phone for hours gossiping with their friends. He would pick up the phone to make a call and there they would be, yakking away for half the day.
He would throw the receiver down on the hook and go storming off swearing really badly. Enough to blister the ears of anyone within listening range, which was normal for him.
Then he would return later to try again. If she was still on the phone gossiping, he would cuss at her and tell her to get off the ****** phone so he could make a call. Of course, this endeared him with all of our gossiping wives on our party line.
I remember my grandmother’s phone that used to sit on a little table in her living room next to the sofa. It was a relic from the 1940s but she still used it for as long as I could remember.
After I left home for the military, I discovered pay phones in booths. That was how we were able to call home when allowed, which wasn’t until near the end of basic training. We all queued up at the one and only phone booth we were allowed to use to make our one quick phone call home.
After that, I didn’t call home very much as all I wanted to do was get out and see the world. I got into trouble once for not writing letters often enough and my mother got worried. She figured out how to call my CO and, boy, did I get yelled at for that. I was told to sit down and write a letter to my mother immediately and post it that very day.
During the 70s I had a serious falling out with my father and brother (one of many and in 1976, the last straw for me) so I didn’t call or write much. After my visit in 1976, I stopped going home. I know this made my mother very sad but she couldn’t control my father or my brother so she remained quietly hopeful that I might return home again someday. Which I did many years later.
During this time, telephones were large all the same. The same landlines that we always had in people’s homes and the phone booths. The only real improvement I remember was the elimination of party lines, which made my father a little happier. Less fighting with the neighbor ladies.
Behind the technology scenes, I am sure some techy people were trying to invent the next big thing but I don’t remember seeing much on the consumer market back then.
During the 80s, I remember that international phone calls became easier through phone booths around the world. We also had improved radio communications back then as well. Hamm radios and Citizens band radios were becoming more affordable and popular.
In the next decade, we started seeing the first mobile phone come out. The ever-popular bag phone for travelers. I remember purchasing one to use, along with the exorbitant costs, for calling home and my bosses when I had a coast-to-coast traveling job. That lasted about 4 years before I got tired of being tired and decided to find a new line of work.
By the mid-90s and beyond, cell phones started to become a thing. Little flip phones and others like the Blackberries and such. When we went to Afghanistan in 2002, we had a satellite phone for emergencies and for our once-a-month MWR call home from our rooftop.
Then, technology seemed to take off like a bottle rocket. Private companies were all getting on the bandwagon with the new wave of technology, offering new style phones and different service plans to hook you on the newest fad.
Pretty soon, you couldn’t live without a cell phone. As a service business owner, from 2005 to 2015, it was a must for me as I needed to stay in touch with my customers all day long while on the road.
I started out with an Android flip phone and after a few years, the warranty companies I had been doing business with, told me I had to upgrade to a “Smart Phone”. As I didn’t know what that was, I had to go ask my cell phone provider and get schooled.
Once again, I was forced into upgrading my phone and service so I could maintain my business relationships. After that, it has been an uphill ride into the future.
Now, we have cell phones of varying manufacturers but Apple still has the largest market share. They are now mini-mobile computers that carries everyone’s lives on them now.
Social media is at the top of the list but, bank account access apps, medical history apps, video meeting apps, and file share apps to access your company’s domain network. Basically, nearly everything a laptop can do without all of the size and weight to carry around.
Then there are the hybrids. The iPads, and other equivalents. I think Samsung has something as I recall. Goes to show you how much I keep up with all of this.
The PC manufacturers needed to be able to compete so they invented notebook-style laptops that are just a step up from the cell phones and iPads but not much.
With all of these electronic devices out there for the consumer to communicate with the world at large, it’s a wonder we can even still make ordinary phone calls anymore. We are a far cry from Alexander Graham bell’s magic voice box and my grandmother's old tabletop rotary phone now.
I am right there with the rest of the world. I almost feel naked without a cell phone in my pocket when I leave home anymore. There are places around the world and even here in the US, where there still isn’t any cell phone service yet. But that is rapidly changing every year. The more they expand the service, the more customers they can add to their databases.
Young people and some older generations now use their phones for nearly everything. SMS messaging is all the rage. What is commonly known as texting? We use our little portable PCs to manage our daily lives in one form or another every day.
I, for one, feel like society has become too dependent on these devices now. What would happen if we lost the radio band, we call cell phone service. All communications between any devices use a type of radio frequency. If radio waves were to get knocked out by an enemy force, like an EMP air burst, which I mentioned in a previous article, how would the average citizen handle the loss?
I bet we would have mass panic and near-total disruption of services. Western civilizations rely on this radio frequency bandwidth entirely too much and it could turn around and bite them in the backside someday.
Although I use a cell phone like everyone else, I still have a backup communications device on my closet shelf. A pair of old-fashioned, hand-held, walkie-talkies. Put a set of batteries in them and off you go using the citizen's band radio frequencies.
Maybe I am paranoid, and I am, being a career soldier, but I learned in my military career, that having redundancy communications can keep you and yours alive during a crisis.
What happens if a big storm knocks over the cell towers? Which does happen. Now what? Are you prepared? What happens when you need help and your cell phone doesn’t work anymore?
They are fine little toys but I don’t depend on them for a lifeline in any way. I can get along just fine without one if I need to. How many young people can say that these days?
Cell phone towers are extremely vulnerable to bad weather. Why do you think the local emergency services still use their old-fashioned radio frequencies still? They know not to depend on cell phones during community emergencies.
Not that we didn’t have landline phone outages when I was a kid growing up. Heavy, wet snow or ice storms would knock out phone services for days at a time as the copper phone wires were strung across “telephone” poles.
It seems that no matter how advanced we have become in consumer communications technology, we have yet to conquer mother earth. Our fancy communications are still very much subject to her whims. Bad weather from high winds, heavy rains, snows, and ice storms can knock us back to the days of Alexander Graham Bell still.
Maybe a Hamm radio outfit isn’t such a bad deal after all. Although, even that technology relies on aerial antennas. At least, if you do have your own radio system, if the antenna blows over, you can fix it yourself without having to rely on your cell phone service provider to restore service someday.
As a young soldier, I went through countless drills and lectures about nuclear war and the aftermaths of a nuclear blast, whether from a ground-based detonation like Nagasaki or an air burst from an EMP.
I also read a lot of books over the years, two of which are my favorite. On The Beach by Neville Shute and The Last Ship by William Brinkley. Old books by today’s standards but still relevant today. The Last Ship was even a TV series a few years ago, although much expanded from the original book. By the way, in the book version, there were no survivors.
Maybe because I am old enough to have gone through all of the Cold War years as a soldier, I am better prepared to handle emergencies, whether they be from bad weather or a nuclear war.
I still have an old crank-style, battery-operated FM/AM radio for emergencies. Along with my hand-held walkie-talkies, I think I can manage any communication blackouts should they occur. Since I live in the eastern portion of the country, I may be a little too close to certain major targets if certain world leaders try something stupid.
Think about. Russia has threatened to use nukes if he doesn’t start winning in Ukraine. Iran is all but frothing at the mouth to throw a nuke at Israel. Of course, Israel will throw something back, and there you go.
Then there are the other countries who have nuclear arsenals and who knows once the gloves come off?
Once the missiles start flying, all one can do is keep their head down and wait it out. Then break out your Hamm radio or walkie-talkie and see if any else is still around.
The world has come a long way from when I was a kid with the party line phones, I wasn’t allowed to use. They were strictly for grownups as I was told. Now every kid has a phone “for protection”. Everywhere you go, someone is walking with their head down looking at a cell phone. Kids are lost without their social media devices aka, cell phones.
I wonder if it is all worth it. Lost generations of face-to-face communications and introverted societies. Kids who have lost the meaning of “Go Play Outside”.
And now, these same lost people will likely die in a weather emergency or worse because they don’t know how to look up anymore.
