[Artemisia] the fossil state (OOP)

[belladonna.difrancia at yahoo.com]

----- Original Message ----
From: Richard Samul <scascot at mac.com>
To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list <artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org>
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 3:47:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] the fossil state (was circlets)


Does 
it 
count 
that 
I 
remember 
when 
phone 
numbers 
had 
letters 
in 
them?

---- NEW MESSAGE! ----


No way; that doesn't count. Phone numbers STILL have letters in them, like this one: 1-800-MICROSOFT. Many of the original exchanges are still intact, too. People just don't actually say the letters anymore. Do you remember when you didn't have to actually dial the exchange (kind of like the area code now) and could reach people with only the last four numbers?

Now, my grandparents had a party line when I was a kid. I also can easily remember when my parents didn't own their telephones; MA Bell did. It was ILLEGAL to own a phone. MA Bell owned them all. But my favorite thing about those days was that people could actually just not be home sometimes. And if they weren't home when you called, they probably didn't have answering machines, either, and they definitely didn't have caller ID, and they wouldn't even know that you had called. And you couldn't IM or email them to leave a message. You just had to get off your BUTT and try again another time if you really wanted to talk to them.

These days people expect you to get back to them within, like, an hour or two. They get offended if you don't. BAH. I don't remember the days before telephones, but I do know that people would actually travel to other people's homes if they wanted to talk to them. And those people might be home, but just not "in to callers." So the people who came to see them would leave their calling cards and travel all the way back home and not even think the people who were busy with their own lives at the time were rude. Wow. Weird, huh?

I remember compuserve and prodigy, too. I remember using UNIX to get on the Internet before GUI browsers. I wrote an article on PDAs when the Newton came out. I wrote articles on 100Base-T when it was an emerging technology. Nothing will make you feel old faster than being at least a little bit aware of computer tech.

Of course, I turned 40 two days ago, so while I'm not the oldest member of Artemisia by any stretch of the imagination, maybe I've joined the Respected Elder ranks. :)

Belladonna




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