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Lamenting the Demise of Hangups
An anonymous reader writes "Ian Bogost writes about a cultural tradition we've mostly lost as smartphones have become ubiquitous: hanging up. While we still use the terminology (in the same way we say 'rewind' when skipping backward on our DVR), the physical act of hanging up a telephone when we're done using it no longer occurs. And we don't get that satisfying crash and clatter when hanging up on somebody to make a point. 'In the context of such gravity, the hangup had a clear and forceful meaning. It offered a way of ending a conversation prematurely, sternly, aggressively. Without saying anything, the hangup said something: we're done, go away. ... Today a true hangup — one you really meant to perform out of anger or frustration or exhaustion — is only temporary and one-sided even when it is successfully executed. Even during a heated exchange, your interlocutor will first assume something went wrong in the network, and you could easily pretend such a thing was true later if you wanted. Calls aren't ever really under our control anymore, they "drop" intransitively.' It's an interesting point about the minor cultural changes that go along with evolving technology."
Make an aggressive hang-up app.
This is really just an updated version of Seinfeld's cordless phone bit
...this is a crappy Soulskill post.
Even for a slow Saturday night.
Couldn't you find another Apple linkbait troll piece to post instead? You know, "Rumor Says New OS X Release Locked to Processor." You know, the lame crap that gets posted here every day which is still better than this...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Preface disconnecting with the following: "This is me hanging up on you".
the full duplex, circuit-switched, not-laggy realtime conversations I used to have on a landline phone. I could be talking, and the other party could be talking at the same time, and both of us could hear each other and understand everything.
The young uns here will probably think I'm making this up. I'm not; back in the day, Candace Bergen could drop a pin and I could hear it over the phone.
If you want to hang up on someone and deliver the same experience, just shout "fuck you!" and tap the "end call" button. You get the same satisfaction and they'll get the message. Is that so hard?
Scorta futuere amo!
yes, and a generation of kids will grow up clicking on a stylized picture of a floppy disk to save things, without having ever used a floppy disk.
This is news how?
Yeah, when my process gets a SIGKILL it doens't know what happened (or even THAT it happened), but when it gets a SIGHUP it knows someone or some thing hung up on it or at least pretended to.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I work in a call center where we still have physical phones (though we only use headsets), I remember hearing about one supervisor call where the sup eventually advised the customer that there was nothing more to discuss and he was going to end the call, he picked up the receiver, de-activated the headset then hung up the receiver, just for the sound.
The best hangup is when, mid-conversation, you whip your cell phone off a wall, smashing it into a million pieces. Didn't have those in the old hangup days, did you?
...about as much as I miss putting a new roll in the fax machine. i.e. not at all.
But then again I bet if you look hard enough you'll find an old fart who thinks that VHS tapes are superior to Bluray.
Before we had the phone, there was no way to hangup at all! Let's lament the lack of smacking someone on the face and stalking off!
I needn't slam a phone to tell the other person on the phone that I'm done with him.
We recently invented a technology called "talking". It allows to "tell" them instead of using possibly ambiguous actions that may be misinterpreted. "Go to hell, you old bastard" is hard to misinterpret.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When I am in a conversation and the other person suddenly hangs up, I will know that the person calling was the cause or that it was a technical issue. Ask anybody and they will tell you that they can tell the difference.
This is the case when I am on the phone and the other person calls with a cellphone. This happens when the other person is on a landline.
What you do not have with a cellphone that you have with a landline is, as caller the satisfaction of slamming the horn down, missing the phone in anger and needing to slam it down several more times.
If you missed, the callee could hear the callers frustration and giggle, However if he did not miss, you would not hear all the noise and you still were sure that the person hung up on you.
So in the past you suddenly did not hear the person anymore. Now you suddenly do not hear the person anymore. There is no difference, except maybe in the theatrical sense.
And yes, we still use the same words for things. That is language. I am sure there are many words we use for things that we do not even know what the original meaning was. That is why ethymology exists.
My guess is that this is about trying to be nostalgic, while there is nothing to be nostalgic about.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No, not quite. That's not what "hang up" means.
When I was a boy, you young whippersnapper, we had a candlestick phone (look it up: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/telephones/candlestick). When the phone rang our distinctive ring pattern, you picked up the candlestick with your right hand, then picked the receiver up with your left and held it to your ear. When the call was complete, you hung the receiver on its hook. Not placed, hung. That, sonny boy, is where the term "hang up" comes from.
Since the telephone operator in town listened in to every call, she knew who was visiting who, so if I'd lift the receiver hook carefully to see if someone was on the party line, then hang up and give the magneto crank one long turn to call the operator, I'd ask in my little boy voice to talk to my aunt Della. The operator knew she was visiting Luella and put the call through. Our phone consisted of the candlestick, plus an oak box on the wall with brass bells and the ringer on the top, a crank on the right side for the magneto, and two dry cells with Fahnestock clips wired in series for power. The phone guy came out and replaced them twice a year. It wasn't even a "central battery" system in those days.
The really scary part is, it's true. We had a candlestick phone until I was about 12 years old in '62 or '63 when we got our first party line dial phone. How freakin' old am I?
From Catch-22:
"It takes brains not to make money," Colonel Cargill wrote in one of the homiletic memoranda he regularly prepared for circulation over General Peckem's signature. "Any fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money."
"T. S. Eliot," ex-P. F. C. Wintergreen said in his mail-sorting cubicle at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and slammed down the telephone without identifying himself.
General Peckem roused himself after a moment with an unctuous and benignant smile. His expression was shrewd and sophisticated. His eyes gleamed maliciously. "Have someone get me General Dreedle," he requested Colonel Cargill. "Don't let him know who's calling." Colonel Cargill handed him the phone.
"T. S. Eliot," General Peckem said, and hung up.
Today, someone would ponder why Wintergreen would slam down the phone, since that would break the screen.
It took me years of psychotherapy to get rid of my hangups. Why would I be sad about their demise?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Where do you come from, 1960s or 70s France, or Eastern Europe?