Don’t Hang Up Boris!
Just heard an internet entrepreneur complain about his parents’ use of their mobile phones. They switch them off when they are at home and often forget to turn them on when they leave the house. Our generation carries a mobile phone at all times and sometimes doesn’t even have a home phone. This is hard to explain to our parents and other older people. The entrepreneur urged them to simply keep the phone on at all times which they warily refused. They told him they didn’t like the prospect of people calling them everywhere and all the time.
My grandfather was a doctor in a small village. He had one of the 20 phones. His phonenumber was 9. When my father grew up the phone was still regarded as a serious tool which you would only use for urgent matters. My father made one phonecall a year and his father had him sit down and make a list of things he wanted to ask - a script - which he had to show for approval before he made the call.
I remember when I had to explain - defend even - to people why I had a mobile phone. Recently I met someone who didn’t own a mobile phone. This was a fact that led to a lot of amusement at the party where I was at. It was noteworthy enough to keep everybody talking about it for about a hour.
One day telephone calls will be free. They might be always on. Probably it will use some technology that confuses me. I will not understand it and resist. My daughters will come over to have a chat about my phone use. They will say something like this:
“Why do you hang up daddy? What is the use? Why do you need to be disconnected? It is so inconvenient to have to reconnect every time we want to hear how you are doing. Last week you hung up the phone for 3 hours! We only found out after 2 hours and then we spent almost a full hour to reconnect! You know it is free, right? No need to keep it short. From now on just keep your communicator switched on at all times so we can hear you, see your heart rate and check your temperature…
If you are new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting and I am looking forward to hearing your comments!
Want to ask me a personal question? Contact me at boris@bomega.com
Subscribe to my Feed!
2 Responses to “Don’t Hang Up Boris!”
Leave a Reply
Powered by
Good article Boris, read it with a smile and can totally agree with this peak into the future you sketched here.
Boris, phone calls are already free since a pretty long time here in France. You only pay a flat fee of 29,99€ and that includes over 200 tv channels, free phone calls to over half of this planet’s population (phone calls to other planets not yet included) and the 2nd fastest internet connection in the world (but they’re working on making it the fastest in the world). And if you have an iPhone, you can call free as well through the provider aptly named… Free.
Strang you didn’t know this, but maybe I should call you more often. It’s free after all.