Negative Space: telephones
- The lost tradition of unannounced visits
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Once upon a time, if you were in the area of a friend, and you had extra time, you’d just drop in for a visit. You wouldn’t call first—phone calls were expensive. You wouldn’t text—there were no texts. You’d just show up. And you’d be even more likely to do this on holidays.
- Natural monopolies: a 20-minute call for $8.83
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“A 20-minute call anywhere in the country will cost me only $3.33? What’s the catch?” The catch is that those are still outrageous monopolistic prices.
- Peer to peer email from 1980
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A fascinating vision of the convergence of e-mail and text messaging from 1980.
