Technology overwhelms the past and its hard to imagine what we did without a phone, but is it more of a device than means of communication?

Phone calls are more personal, more characterful, but technology overwhelms and phone phobia is yet more evidence of de-socialisation writes Peter Goers.

The other day a scammer rang me. He said, ominously, “I have all your passwords”. I said, “Thank goodness. Let me get a pen and paper and you can tell me what they are”.

Scammers are annoying. They are telephonic mosquitoes. Perhaps they are one reason why most young people won’t actually answer a phone call. Are they shy? Are they too busy wistfully scrolling through everything like a gay French king, or are they too preoccupied sending texts? IDK but WTF?

Peter Goers looks forward to his daily 8am phone call with a friend.

Nowadays almost all of us have a phone in our pocket with us almost all of the time. Many people have accidentally dropped their phone in the toilet - quick get the rice to soak up the water and urine (yuk). Is there yet a waterproof phone you can use in the shower? The point of a telephone is no longer actually speaking on it which is still its primary function. It’s like having a car and never driving it.

You’d think it’s easier to speak than type but young fingers are nimble and even little kids seem to have an innate sense of technology and they grow up with it unlike older generations. I still struggle with a can opener.

For me, brevity is the soul of texting. I really only ever text, Ha!, Ta, XXX, Wow! or Onya. Mercifully my emails are often just as brief. I hate typing. I love confusing the young by texting the words “smiley face emoji” and, better yet, when they do bother answering the phone, I say as we used to in telephonic pre-history 25 years ago, “please hold the wire”. This utterly confounds them. Ha!

When we watched the beloved futuristic cartoon series The Jetsons we were fascinated by television telephones whereby you saw the other party and they saw you. It was a thrilling concept. Now we can all do that all the time and nobody does because the whole point of a telephone is not being seen.

Technology overwhelms the past and its hard to imagine what we did without a phone in our pocket or reticule writes Peter Goers.

Technology overwhelms the past and its hard to imagine what we did without a phone in our pocket or reticule. Remember when not everyone had a phone - a heavy black bakelite model with a rotary dial per the PMG and neighbours would ask to use it. It sat on a telephone table in the hall and there was a jar or a twee box next to it for neighbours to deposit ten cents to use your phone and country people had party lines and other country people listened in.

Interstate and the almost inconceivably expensive international calls were trunk calls which had to be booked in three minute increments. The operator (always a woman) would call you and say, “You’re party is on the line…. (and subsequently)…. You’re three minutes is up, would you like to extend…” which you never did.

The telephone was used sparingly. I was upbraided by my father as a 12 year old for calling 5KA to request the banned song “Snoopy Vs The Baron” (banned because…shock! horror! it included the lyric “bloody”) because I used the phone.

Why are young people so anxious to avoid talking on this instrument?

Women in posh suburbs had “telephone voices”. Red public phone boxes were ubiquitous, smelly and busy places painted in squiggly green and black paint inside to deter graffiti and I imagined if you pressed button B you destroyed the world.

All this ancient social lore of the telephone is gone. Now a phone is not a phone it’s a device. Why are young people so anxious to avoid talking on this instrument? Phone phobia is yet more evidence of de-socialisation. Phone calls are more personal, more characterful. I get the idea of control as I like making calls more than receiving them but older people still give good phone. I have a daily call at 8am with my closest friend for 30-60 minutes and it’s a highlight of my day and, hopefully, hers.

Corporations and politicians are even worse than the young in phone avoidance. For example, it is impossible to call a post office, bank branch or a Dan Murphy liquor outlet. I left a message on the latter’s national number without response.

I was often asked why Anne Moran and Nick Xenophon had such a good run in the media. They answered their phone immediately or called you back within five minutes. In the media, accessibility is all. Nowadays you get a text or email from someone in business or politics - OOO - out of office. Meanwhile the young (bless ‘em) may say of all this TL;DR and BTW ATM IDGAF. But I actually do GAF. LOL. Does that mean lots of love or laugh out loud? WTF. Sighing face emoji.