Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
I remember when telephones were useful as telephones. Today they are used to surf the Internet and for text messages. Most people don’t answer the ring unless they recognize the number. Many never set up their email or message functions on their cell phones.
I keep my cell phone off and only turn it on when I have to use it in order to report Internet or power outage or to receive a security code so I can sign on and connect with an Internet financial or payment site. I have ceased answering the house phone unless I am expecting a call. 95% of calls are intrusive scams or robo calls. The digital revolution has made it possible for your privacy to be invaded by scum from every country who assume they have a right to invade your space and use your time in an attempt to take advantage of you.
Despite the destruction of privacy, a Constitutional right, people are being forced to have a cell phone and endless apps just in order to function.
Telephones are useless in other ways. Businesses are no longer set up to answer phones or to let you speak to a person. You get a robot that gives you a menu unrelated to the reason for your call. My favorite is when I call about the Internet or the power being down and am told by the Internet or power company’s robot to report the problem on the online site. When there is the option of speaking to a customer representative, you invariably are told that “due to an unusual number of calls,” you have a long wait time. Occasionally, you are offered the opportunity to leave a callback number and are promised to be called back within 24 hours. Just the other day it took me 1 hour and 47 minutes to deal with a matter via telephone that would have taken 30 seconds 40, 50, 60 years ago.
I remember when AT&T was a blue chip regulated monopoly, a safe investment with a good diviend. Service was superb. The company answered by the third ring, and whoever answered was capable of fixing any problem. You weren’t put on hold for a quarter hour listening to advertisements while the customer representative tried to get through to his supervisor to find out what to do. If a line was down or a transformer blown, AT&T was on the job before you could pick up the telephone to report it. Telephone bills for local service were a couple of dollars a month.
As Assistant Secretary of the Treasury I still remember the plan to break up AT&T that the Reagan administration inherited from the Carter administration. Saddled with getting Reagan’s supply-side policy out of his reluctant administration, I hadn’t the time or energy to try to block the breakup of AT&T. I still regret that the Reagan administration failed to recognize the disastrous consequences of breaking up AT&T. The “Baby Bells” were good lobbyists and had the skids greased. The breakup began the descent of the telephone from useful device to intrusive bother that no one will answer.
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Glad to know I’m not the only one who keeps their cell phone turned off and only turned on when I need to use it..
Even if “turned off”, better put it in a mylar bag (unless you can and do take out the battery)
I remember when TV had three channels, went off at midnight and came on at 6 AM – seven days per week. Now, it’s portable and tracks you and compiles a dossier on you. And no one ever looks away from its toxic bluish glow, to look up and see (what’s left) of the bluer sky.
BTW, I’ve never owned either a TV or a cell phone. I do miss phone booths, though – and the whole world that went along with them. Were I ever compelled by events to, I’d get the cheapest flip phone and barest service. And I’d never use it unless necessary.
I’m guessing you either liked standing in them during rainstorms or you are Superman.
They were time travel machines, more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
“I’d get the cheapest flip phone and barest service.”
That’s my voice phone, 25 USD . . .a quarter, prepaid. (I have a more standard slab smartphone as well, but it’s never had a sim card in it. I use it as a pocketable wifi tablet. In that role it’s quite useful).
I note, however, that all phones you can buy now, even the ones that look like old fashioned, dumb flip phones, are smartphones with some sort of privacy issues involved.
Right kfg, the new TracFones are 5G.
I remember when we only had one broadcast channel, and our tv was a 1939 GE model the size of a small refrigerator and had a 12 inch screen. And we could only watch it part of the time because it got so hot from all the tubes.
It was so old it had a channel 1.
Channel 1? I’ve never heard of channel 1. I suddenly feel young.
All comments on this website have duly recorded and filed for further review.
Yours truly the NSA
Thank you, sir. May I have another?
yep,lots of medicare advantage & depends ads are inbound —
I can’t stand this cell phone society either. Zombies mesmerized by an electronic gadget. There’s something to be said for a good EMP.
It is annoying when they walk into the street without looking.
Although It is easy to understand, and even agree with much of Paul Craig Roberts article, his argument about preserving AT&T is absurd. The corporation was a monopoly, which took advantage in this role to steamrole the general public with a lack of service, while charging unjustified costs for it’s service. The demise of the telephone is part of the story of the demise of our civilization. Allowing AT&T to keep it’s monopoly would not have changed this situation.
Also in bed with NSA long before cell phones were a thing.
Notice how the Internet couldn’t get rolling until after the breakup.
Yes. Auld lang zyne pines for less worse days, but w/o fail refers to those as the good old days. People lie. Constantly. And to themselves most of all.
And, like a drunk, even if on the wagon, PCR’s cycles will always be set way too high, will always test positive for the good old constitution yadda-yadda. He will always be a gov-drunk.
And that addiction is, has, will always be about the five finger digital discounts. Binary criminality. Vote for the good cops – not the bad cops. Be an American gangster-collectivist. Not a person. Certainly not your own person.
As the old joke goes:
“We’re the phone company. We don’t care because we don’t have to.”
AT&T is evil and it’s not only me that thinks this, but executives who work for AT&T as well, which I want go into to, but I will leave this. If you have a problem with AT&T service and need it solved quickly, but aren’t getting anywhere with the dot head flunkies who answer their phones, report them to the Better Business Bureau . This will get you prompt service from corporate. It works every time.
Only place where good service is anymore is mom/pops that are quickly vanishing.
Just a reminder, the .gov agencies can still listen in to your phone even if it is turned off.
Cell phones have done more to enslave Americans than any other factor. The addiction level for the younger crowd is off the charts and I wonder if they will ever realize they gave up their best years to play on a small electronic device totally missing the real human experience.
If you truly don’t like the globalist agenda, ditch the cell phones as it is at the heart of their individual control over you in the future. I guess they could put an electronic collar around our necks but then you would definitely catch on to your enslavement.
They can still listen even when it’s in a Faraday bag. I looked into it after my alarm went off loud and clear from inside the bag. If I can hear sounds coming through the bag, why wouldn’t the phone also be able to hear through the bag?
The phone is unable to transmit what it hears from a faraday bag. It can record and transmit later, but I doubt they would bother.
Right, it can’t transmit while in the bag. It can record and transmit later. I don’t know if that’s happening or not, but I doubt that I’m a big enough threat for them to bother. Yet.
The most revolutionary act we can commit is to throw away our cell phones.
Bump- I have been saying that here for a long time.
Did that 15 years ago….. not used one since.
I don’t use no stankin’ spyphone hooked to the internet say’s boomer commenting via spybox logged onto internet….reeeeeee
True. when I leave the desk, the desktop doesn’t go with me, is all. Reeeeeventually, I see a life sans dopanet & computer.
You go first, bruh, I need my Google maps…
A Garmin GPS solves the problem, Flashy.
Except that is exactly analogous to saying just kick your habit, addict.
The war on drugs was never anything more than a turf war over *which* drugs would dominate the street corners (& streets, & homes, & the captive citizen-junkies).
And who was the boss (cough cia cough) at the top running the cartels .
And the international banks laundering the money.
Not even using email anymore, but some proprietary chat/messaging app only, is the real stunner.
I always leave phone at home never take it with me. I do miss payphones though. I do not miss outrageous long distance phone bill.
Pay phones were not removed because cell phones made them superfluous, they were removed to make cell phones essential.
Likewise paper maps.
I still use paper maps. They’re still available, at least at our truck stop.
AAA still has them …
Tried to get a Thomas Guide for the current area. All that’s left is unsold inventory from 20+ years back.
CP’s are not essential. Even “for work” – given that, as others have noted, the worker cp’s don’t much bother to even answer (straight to v/m), & then maybe you get a call back, but often you don’t. WTF kind of “business” is that?
And addicts are more & more being introduced to the factoid of what & who is essential, & who isn’t. But, somehow, lol, it doesn’t seem register that, mostly, it ain’t them who have been deemed “essential.”
Dumping cp’s & reorganizing comms & biz qualifies as an inconvenience. Unless you’re an addict. Then it becomes “essential” not to kick.
What’s the cheese in a mousetrap? The salt block out front of the stand? The wooden nickel ducks floating in front of the blind. Bait. Bait is convenience. Baited convenience is a shortcut to “satisfaction” (does *anybody* think, or merely believe, that their satisfaction is the goal of them who put out the baits?). Shortcuts are for assholes, somebody wrote. Mighta been me.
Feelin’ good was good enough for me & my Bobby McGee. That’s the credo of addicts. It’s not enough. The providers of that feel are feelin’ up those feelers. And being fingerf’d on the bus while you were otherwise en-dazed has consequences, same as for the mouse that went for the cheese, the deer that went for the salt, the duck that went for the wooden collective.
Leave a little room for exceptions. But not much.
Like a standard response to opposing the convenience of “abortion” is the “winning” whatabout: rape. Rape conceptions happen. But not so much. And that’s not a substitute, or synonym, for “abortion,” in its millions upon millions, in general.
So, “emergencies,” (how did people survive emergencies pre cp?), “work” (already covered) are like crying “rape”-wolf.
What is this steel bar across the back of my neck as I lay here dying? I was only nibbling this free cheese given out by our government.
death by a thousand shortcuts
So … maybe folks have traded the ‘outrageous long distance phone bill’ on a telephone that would last an atomic blast for a cell phone that costs one heck of a lot of money and needs to be replaced every few years (if only to ‘keep up with the Joneses’) …
Not sure where the benefit lies …
Darn kids and their…..cell phones! It’s just a tool and like any tool it can be misused and exploited. Being knowledgeable on how to protect your device from nefarious people helps.
Just like gain of function is just a tool that allowed the experts to create safe and effective vaccines against Covid.
Good point Anon. 🙂
“You get a robot that gives you a menu unrelated to the reason for your call.”
This happens to me whenever I try to solve a problem. The menu options are for the simple or frequency asked questions, like what are your hours of operation? I can handle the easy stuff, thank you.
So I chose a menu option that I think is close and hope to get a human who can help me or at least get me to the right person. This doesn’t always work. At times it comes to a dead end, and I call back to try another option.
The worst was a recent encounter with Amazon where an A.I. was “helping” me. After a couple of tries I decided to lie to the AI and then I finally got a human, who still would not solve my problem unless I would go online. I hadn’t ordered from them in a few years. For prior orders I was pleased with the landline customer service that I had received.
Me thinks that all of this run around is to make it too big of a hassle to try to talk to an actual human, for any reason, and to make sure that all of us get in that cattle chute and perform all communications online, where the conversation is already digitized, and the humans learn to accept shunning human interaction as normal.
Welcome to the party. Better late than never.
Been at “the party” for decades now, just making a comment. I will continue to try to speak with actual humans. I will keep my landline as long as they are still available. I will go the brick & mortar route whenever possible, and will continue to avoid ordering online.
I also use cash, pay bills by check (zero automatic payments), and plan ahead so that I can avoid using the debit card.
You didn’t write it all. “pal” after party. And then “yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!” ~ Die Hard
The last time I had an actual voice conversation with another human being on my cell phone was about 2 months ago and that was for a job interview.
Run Calyx OS on a degoogled phone with encrypted email and Signal for texts. And never ever answer an anonymous call. All good!
My biz still uses wired phones, 6 lines. We answer it too. Our existing customers know the deal, new ones say it all the time “it’s great you guys answer the phone”. Old fashioned, maybe. works for us.
I bet most TBP regulars are old enough to remember living without a cell phone. I think if cell phones stopped working people would lose their minds. I delivered all over the country using a map and office/pay phones for years.
‘The company answered by the third ring, and whoever answered was capable of fixing any problem.’
Nowadays, the person who eventually answers is in either manila or Mumbai … and at least the ones in Mumbai seem to speak English — though with a nicer accent.
I’m sick of talking with filipinos who speak some sort of pidgin English — and I’ve even asked them how they’d like to have to speak to someone in a foreign nation who doesn’t speak their language.
I finally started asking for someone who actually speaks English when they started using people with too much accent and too little understanding of the language. I won’t waste any more time asking them to repeat, if you can’t communicate well you’re out.
I remember picking up the phone and hearing the neighbor lady gossiping on the party line
…for people who can not live without drama. What a great invention! Accidentally leave the phone off the hook and possibly start civil war !II with your neighbors. That there’s country!
Boo fuckin hoo, Boomer! Drink some warm milk and take a nap.
You unleashed this shitty world on all of us and now you’re gonna cry about it?
Bullcrap – Globalist one-worldism has been plotted in secret for eons.
I was about 4 yrs. old when we got that new thing everybody had to have – a TV. I called it a “bish bosh”.