A Blog by Jonathan Low

 

Sep 20, 2018

The Death of the Phone Call

On the internet no one knows you have a voice. And people appear to be deciding that maybe its better that way. JL

Rhik Sammader reports in The Guardian:

Landlines. Call screening. Voice mail. The sound of one’s phone actually ringing prompts terror of the unfamiliar. Of news that has to be delivered in person, death and sackings. Or worse, a conversation. How long will that take? Who will check my messages? What happens when the witty facade cultivated over text is revealed as a sham, a cover for the stumbling, dry-mouthed moron I actually am? Better not to pick up at all.
When did we fall out of love? Why did we stop talking? How hard is it to pick up the phone? Apparently, quite hard. Research indicates a quarter of smartphone users never use them to place a voice call. It’s not just digital natives; I can’t remember the last time I called a friend for a chat. The idea is as alien as eating a pint of mayonnaise prawns, or standing when a lady enters the room. Getting a phone call is even worse: it feels like being hijacked, or thrust on stage at the Albert Hall, without a script. With email, messaging, hangouts and social media on the menu, it’s not as if we suffer a lack of options when it comes to asking honey about their day. But are we losing something? Let’s take a look at the ways we still talk, to see if conversation really is dying, and if it even matters.

Landlines

Wall-mounted communications handset, connected to similar by physical, copper wire network. Invented by cave-dwelling savages, in a land before time.
I remember an hour-long argument with the phone company when I moved into my flat, on being informed that I had to have a landline if I wanted the internet. I felt like a bald man being sold pomade. The company advised me I could call friends and family cheaply if I signed up to special packages. I can call them for free using the internet, I replied. Besides, I’m not calling any friends or family, unless I need a kidney or a place to stay. The landline’s primary use is on TV, as a signifier you’re watching a period drama, ie anything set in 1995. They were so inefficient they bordered on surreal. Upon picking up, you never knew who would be on the other end: the National Lottery or Beryl from down the road or his Holiness the Pope. Weirdly, you were expected to identify yourself, though they had called you. That’s because manual dialling led to a lot of miscalls. Large portions of the day were spent convincing strangers that you weren’t Darren, didn’t know Darren, and were sure he was sorry for what he’d done. Relics of a time when we remembered phone numbers, a disproportionate number of calls to landlines are probably from people needing bail. The only funny way to use a landline in recent years was to send a text message to one, and have a robotic voice read it aloud in a way that was guaranteed to unsettle your mother.Landlines are solely for older relatives who haven’t got to grips with mobiles. Having said that, it’s possible they’ll make a comeback, in the same way the streaming age saw the resurgence of record players and vinyl. Imagine dialling a friend on a rotary phone, which takes about 20 minutes if you don’t make any mistakes. Imagine taking time out of your overstimulated, hectic day to do that. Quite nice, no? With that curly, twirlable wire tethering you to one spot, and their lack of screen, the practical limitations of the landline could see it become a mindfulness tool, encouraging us to sit and you know, really talk. Could – but almost certainly won’t. These days landlines are cordless, and come with Caller ID, and are really just mobile phones that never finished their degree.

Call screening

Selectively allowing calls to ring through to voicemail (see: voicemail), even though the recipient is free to talk. In the wild, it is never not funny to see someone being screened.
Accustomed to the friendly chimes and dings of messages and email, the sound of one’s phone actually ringing prompts terror of the unfamiliar. Of news that has to be delivered in person, death and sackings
Or worse, a conversation. How long will that take? Who will check my messages? What happens when the witty facade cultivated over text is revealed as a sham, a cover for the stumbling, dry-mouthed moron I actually am? Better not to pick up at all.Even when phoning was a popular pastime, rather than an invitation to a panic attack, not everyone’s call was answered. Screening is classically associated with the romantic brush-off. It can be interpreted as cruel or kind; the gentle, downward ramp of neglect versus the sharp cliff edge of rejection. It’s an example of ghosting – ending a relationship by withdrawing from communication – and cited as evidence that we no longer know how to have difficult conversations. The wrong name appears on screen, or some drunken variation of a name – Pete from boat, Amanda dont answer – and back in the pocket they go.In the old days of landlines (see: landlines) this wasn’t a thing. People always picked up, because life was boring; awkwardness abounded. With mobiles, and the ability to silence a ringer without aborting the call, came a golden age of the technique. But smartphones moved things on again. No one is conversationally as much fun as a gif of a raccoon riding a tricycle, so we’ve stopped trying to be. If your phone rings now, bet your bottom bitcoin it’s no one you know. It’s far more likely to be a robot cold-calling because they “heard you were in a car accident recently”. (This is a line that always makes me feel like a character in The Sixth Sense who didn’t know they were dead.) Some scams merely need you to pick up, proving your number is a live contact that can be sold. Phone calls feel like an invasion now, a point of weakness in our privacy. No wonder we’re getting phobic. It presents a philosophical conundrum: if we get to the point where we screen all calls, does that mean we’re screening none?

Voicemail

Spoken messages left after unsuccessful call attempts, recorded on to tape or a digital mailbox. Private medium, accessible only to the recipient and the News of the World.
I’ve not had a working voicemail for well over a decade. My mobile company couldn’t turn it on, despite repeated complaints, until I realised they were doing me a favour. It ruffled feathers. My agent at the time said she needed to leave me detailed voicemails about auditions, so I could listen to them and call her back ASAP. I was given a clear choice between performing, my lifelong dream, and the dream of being left alone. It wasn’t even close.Having quit acting, I no longer wanted to speak in
lengthy soliloquies, entirely improvised, which is what voicemails are. Utterly pointless, they should be done away with without delay or regret. There’s no way to quickly parse an answer machine message for the important bits. You have to endure the whole thing, the fumbling for phrasing, the detours down unrelated avenues, the pauses while they try to remember the original point, while time itself slows to half speed, then half again, and you wonder if it’s possible you’ll be listening to this message until the end of recorded time. Almost as bad as phone calls, answer machine messages are as efficient a carrier of information as smoke signals on a windy day.
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Mobile voicemail is, if anything, worse. It’s like being handed a stack of homework. Who’s still leaving these, with the galaxy of direct and concise options available? To hear it, the recipient has to make a phone call (see: the worst), navigate a tedious touch-tone menu (actually, this is the worst), before listening to someone who isn’t there, making small talk to no one. Then they must find a pencil to write down another phone number, or postcode, or whatever vital information could have just been sent in a text. That’s if the message isn’t the numbing, ear-grating sound of the caller walking down a gravel path for 23 minutes, having accidentally dialled the number with their arse.
The quality always seemed to be terrible, too. The last old-style answering machine message I remember was from the hospital, delivering the results of my father’s postmortem. He died of p*£**t*g#, we were told, due to an unfortunate amount of static on the line at the crucial point. Never did find out. Useless.

Video calls

Live sound and picture streaming between two connected parties. Valuable corrective to self-esteem.
There’s a certain glamour to this technology. In the movies, satellite links are associated with heads of state coming together to fight alien threats. In real life, it allows musicians to receive awards at ceremonies that they can’t attend due to house arrest. (Arguably, speeches delivered via live video are actually mega-voicemails.) But you’re not doing those things, and you don’t look like that. Facetime, Google Duo and WhatsApp video calls are great if your best angle is close to, and slightly below, your face – the only comfortable place to hold a phone for a long time. Which of course it isn’t. Activating the front-facing camera on any device serves as a reminder that your head is a crime scene which should be cordoned off with hazard tape. It’s a superb way to show people your wattle, and get feedback on nose hair hygiene. But there are downsides, too.Video calling sells itself as the ultimate way to connect, from across the world. Some say it was invented so that businessmen on the road could watch their baby’s first steps. I think businessmen use it to watch adults doing other things with their legs, but I have no proof. Regardless, is it true that live video allows for greater intimacy? On a regular call the other person’s voice is next to your ear, almost in your head. You could both be whispering. By contrast, a Skype call begins with 12 minutes of taking turns to say, “I can hear you but I can’t see you – can you see me?” That’s before you start the conversation, in which the awkwardness of a phone call is dialled up to 10.
Most communication takes place around the words. Body language can and will be used against you, and you don’t even have the right to remain silent. On a voice-only call you can walk around and look at things, shampoo the dog with your free hand. With video, there’s nowhere to hide. You have committed the entirety of your mental and physical presence. Can you cash that cheque? Every blush, eye roll or bored glance away will be digested and reflected back at you, in the form of an argument. You’re
trapped, until you can no longer stifle that yawn, and the other person ends the call and possibly your relationship.

Voice notes

One-touch record/upload facility within messaging services, which folds an audio file into an existing chat thread. The new way to have a lovely chat, while not having one at all.
I remember when Bluetooth earpieces were introduced, and people started behaving as if they’d literally gone mad: walking through the streets, babbling to themselves. The rise of the voice note has been similarly jarring. I’m noticing more and more people using them recently, dictaphoning their thoughts in a solipsistic bubble, before sending the chat-packet on to someone else, in place of a written message. There’s an unfortunate Alan Partridge “memo to Lynn” feel about the behaviour. The obvious benefit of voice notes is that it is faster to speak than type. For me, an obvious drawback is that it is slower to listen than read. In WhatsApp, you can now lock the record button in place, making it easier to leave long messages. What is this, The Voicemail Strikes Back? And if two people exchange a series of voice notes in quick succession, like a couple of walking 2018 hashtags, are they having a phone conversation without realising it? I don’t think so. Live conversation is pure improvisation, as much about listening as speaking. Voice notes remain part of a messaging system: we still prepare our thoughts, even if we have less power to edit them. They’re one-way transmissions, akin to a social media post: I have my say and move on with my life. You respond at leisure, and move on with yours. We’re counter-directional runners, each in our lanes, nodding when we pass.
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But I have to say, I don’t mind them. For years, I’ve been at an impasse with my friend James, who loves a call as much I abhor one. He’s always preferred to talk. He used to leave me epic recorded messages of drunken guff in the early hours of the morning, caterwauling Someone Like You by Adele, or It’s So Funny How We Don’t Talk Any More, and getting uncomfortably sincere. Voice notes have restored this mysterious outlet for his passions, in a form that doesn’t involve me being woken at 2am; I can reply with a brief text, or a picture of a poo. It’s a compromise that works for our contrasting personalities, and keeps the friendship alive. It’s good to talk – as long as I don’t always have to listen.

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