One of the ironies of modern life is that everyone is glued to their phones, but nobody uses them as phones anymore. Not by choice, anyway. Phone calls—you know, where you put the thing up to your ear and speak to someone in real time—are becoming relics of a bygone era, the “phone” part of a smartphone turning vestigial as communication evolves, willingly or not, into data-oriented formats like text messaging and chat apps.
The distaste for telephony is especially acute among Millennials, who have come of age in a world of AIM and texting, then gchat and iMessage, but it’s hardly limited to young people. When asked, people with a distaste for phone calls argue that they are presumptuous and intrusive, especially given alternative methods of contact that don’t make unbidden demands for someone’s undivided attention. In response, some have diagnosed a kind of telephoniphobia among this set. When even initiating phone calls is a problem—and even innocuous ones, like phoning the local Thai place to order takeout—then anxiety rather than habit may be to blame: When asynchronous, textual media like email or WhatsApp allow you to intricately craft every exchange, the improvisational nature of ordinary, live conversation can feel like an unfamiliar burden. Those in power sometimes think that this unease is a defect in need of remediation, while those supposedly afflicted by it say they are actually just fine, thanks very much.
But when it comes to taking phone calls and not making them, nobody seems to have admitted that using the telephone today is a different material experience than it was 20 or 30 (or 50) years ago, not just a different social experience. That’s not just because our phones have also become fancy two-way pagers with keyboards, but also because they’ve become much crappier phones. It’s no wonder that a bad version of telephony would be far less desirable than a good one. And the telephone used to be truly great, partly because of the situation of its use, and partly because of the nature of the apparatus we used to refer to as the “telephone”—especially the handset. (...)
Today, the industrial design of mobile phones has only exacerbated the unreliability and awkwardness of telephony. But there was a time when phone design was central to the feeling of intimacy and warmth and comfort we once associated with the telephone.
The Western Electric model 500 was the most popular telephone model of the 20th century, issued by Bell System and its subsidiaries from 1950 until the breakup of the Bell monopoly in 1984. It’s the phone you think of when you think of telephones, and its silhouetted handset shape remains the universal icon for “phone”—even on your iPhone’s telephone app. Like its predecessors and successors in the Bell System, the 500 was designed by Henry Dreyfuss, the mid-century industrial designer also responsible for the Honeywell T87 thermostat, the J-3 Hudson locomotive, and the Polaroid SX-70—all icons of their eras and well beyond.
The 500 wasn’t the first telephone to use the basic handset shape; versions existed since the 1870s, and by the 1930s, the combined design had replaced the “candlestick” style that preceded it, with its separated mouthpiece and receiver. Initially, the handset was considered too heavy and awkward for home use, where the delicate but light candlestick offered more facile and welcoming handling. But over time, the combined handset’s convenience and stability made it central to the experience of telephony. The Western Electric 500 did (and still does) hold the laurel for this achievement.
The 500 handset is solid and hefty while not being too heavy to lift and hold for long periods. That it could be held at all, and that we would enjoy holding it—this is an unsung virtue of the handset. Whether grasped at its center like a handle, cradled at the rounded mouthpiece base with the thumb and forefinger, or wedged between the ear and the shoulder to allow the use of both hands freely, the 500 handset conforms to the ergonomics required for listening and speaking.
It sounds like an idiotic tautology of an observation, until you think about cell phones by comparison. The mobile phone in general and the smartphone in particular are designed to be carried first, and spoken into second. Some versions over the decades have been more adept as telephone handsets. 1983’s Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was large and square, almost too large to be easily held or carried. By 1996, the Motorola StarTAC (the first clamshell “flip” phone) offered a thoughtful compromise between portability and usability. And the 1998 Nokia 5110, the most popular “candybar” phone, still had enough heft and form to feel like a phone handset while also being pocketable, to a point.The handset made telephony a tactile activity as much as an auditory one.
But over the first decade of the new millennium, the BlackBerry, the Treo, the RAZR, the iPhone, and the various Android handsets shrunk and thinned the smartphone into the flat, rectangular standard we know today. It’s perfect for carrying and tapping and pocketing, but it’s awful for talking through. (...)
Today, we have an alternative for long-distance intimacy: the capacitive touch screen. On your iPhone or your Galaxy, tactility can be achieved directly, by touching the cool screen to warm it, by swiping or stroking through a text chat. Your fingers can linger even if not for functional reasons. True, iMessage and Facebook Messenger might seem more aloof and impersonal than calling by voice, but today’s smartphone user is right to identify those experiences as the sensual, tactical successors to the telephone handset with its duplex of truncated 3 kHz voices echoing inside.
That time has ended, it seems. As for its replacement? I can’t deny that your touchscreen is private and alive and responsive. It’s where rapport and affection now live, for better and worse. Perhaps my chagrin in making this concession doesn’t come from a nostalgic regret for the end of the telephone’s life as a technology of intimacy, but out of lament that so few of the engineers and designers working on its replacement seem to deploy the deliberateness and care of Henry Dreyfuss or Bernard Oliver. Instead of the next PCM or Western Electric 500 handset, we get a thousand startups trying to flip their derivative chat app, or a cloying, hackneyed method for sending pictures of hearts from your new smartwatch, or a baby-faced billionaire’s dubious promise to “connect us” while reselling our attention.
The distaste for telephony is especially acute among Millennials, who have come of age in a world of AIM and texting, then gchat and iMessage, but it’s hardly limited to young people. When asked, people with a distaste for phone calls argue that they are presumptuous and intrusive, especially given alternative methods of contact that don’t make unbidden demands for someone’s undivided attention. In response, some have diagnosed a kind of telephoniphobia among this set. When even initiating phone calls is a problem—and even innocuous ones, like phoning the local Thai place to order takeout—then anxiety rather than habit may be to blame: When asynchronous, textual media like email or WhatsApp allow you to intricately craft every exchange, the improvisational nature of ordinary, live conversation can feel like an unfamiliar burden. Those in power sometimes think that this unease is a defect in need of remediation, while those supposedly afflicted by it say they are actually just fine, thanks very much.But when it comes to taking phone calls and not making them, nobody seems to have admitted that using the telephone today is a different material experience than it was 20 or 30 (or 50) years ago, not just a different social experience. That’s not just because our phones have also become fancy two-way pagers with keyboards, but also because they’ve become much crappier phones. It’s no wonder that a bad version of telephony would be far less desirable than a good one. And the telephone used to be truly great, partly because of the situation of its use, and partly because of the nature of the apparatus we used to refer to as the “telephone”—especially the handset. (...)
Today, the industrial design of mobile phones has only exacerbated the unreliability and awkwardness of telephony. But there was a time when phone design was central to the feeling of intimacy and warmth and comfort we once associated with the telephone.
The Western Electric model 500 was the most popular telephone model of the 20th century, issued by Bell System and its subsidiaries from 1950 until the breakup of the Bell monopoly in 1984. It’s the phone you think of when you think of telephones, and its silhouetted handset shape remains the universal icon for “phone”—even on your iPhone’s telephone app. Like its predecessors and successors in the Bell System, the 500 was designed by Henry Dreyfuss, the mid-century industrial designer also responsible for the Honeywell T87 thermostat, the J-3 Hudson locomotive, and the Polaroid SX-70—all icons of their eras and well beyond.
The 500 wasn’t the first telephone to use the basic handset shape; versions existed since the 1870s, and by the 1930s, the combined design had replaced the “candlestick” style that preceded it, with its separated mouthpiece and receiver. Initially, the handset was considered too heavy and awkward for home use, where the delicate but light candlestick offered more facile and welcoming handling. But over time, the combined handset’s convenience and stability made it central to the experience of telephony. The Western Electric 500 did (and still does) hold the laurel for this achievement.
The 500 handset is solid and hefty while not being too heavy to lift and hold for long periods. That it could be held at all, and that we would enjoy holding it—this is an unsung virtue of the handset. Whether grasped at its center like a handle, cradled at the rounded mouthpiece base with the thumb and forefinger, or wedged between the ear and the shoulder to allow the use of both hands freely, the 500 handset conforms to the ergonomics required for listening and speaking.
It sounds like an idiotic tautology of an observation, until you think about cell phones by comparison. The mobile phone in general and the smartphone in particular are designed to be carried first, and spoken into second. Some versions over the decades have been more adept as telephone handsets. 1983’s Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was large and square, almost too large to be easily held or carried. By 1996, the Motorola StarTAC (the first clamshell “flip” phone) offered a thoughtful compromise between portability and usability. And the 1998 Nokia 5110, the most popular “candybar” phone, still had enough heft and form to feel like a phone handset while also being pocketable, to a point.The handset made telephony a tactile activity as much as an auditory one.
But over the first decade of the new millennium, the BlackBerry, the Treo, the RAZR, the iPhone, and the various Android handsets shrunk and thinned the smartphone into the flat, rectangular standard we know today. It’s perfect for carrying and tapping and pocketing, but it’s awful for talking through. (...)
Today, we have an alternative for long-distance intimacy: the capacitive touch screen. On your iPhone or your Galaxy, tactility can be achieved directly, by touching the cool screen to warm it, by swiping or stroking through a text chat. Your fingers can linger even if not for functional reasons. True, iMessage and Facebook Messenger might seem more aloof and impersonal than calling by voice, but today’s smartphone user is right to identify those experiences as the sensual, tactical successors to the telephone handset with its duplex of truncated 3 kHz voices echoing inside.
That time has ended, it seems. As for its replacement? I can’t deny that your touchscreen is private and alive and responsive. It’s where rapport and affection now live, for better and worse. Perhaps my chagrin in making this concession doesn’t come from a nostalgic regret for the end of the telephone’s life as a technology of intimacy, but out of lament that so few of the engineers and designers working on its replacement seem to deploy the deliberateness and care of Henry Dreyfuss or Bernard Oliver. Instead of the next PCM or Western Electric 500 handset, we get a thousand startups trying to flip their derivative chat app, or a cloying, hackneyed method for sending pictures of hearts from your new smartwatch, or a baby-faced billionaire’s dubious promise to “connect us” while reselling our attention.
by Ian Bogost, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Ian Bogost
