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Don't Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone (And the Network)
Ever screamed at your phone, or wanted to, when it can't handle the basic job of linking you to another person by voice? antdude writes to say that The Atlantic has posted a long article titled "Don't Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone" about how our telephone habits have changed, but so have the infrastructure and design of the handset. A snippet: When you combine the seemingly haphazard reliability of a voice call with the sense of urgency or gravity that would recommend a phone call instead of a Slack DM or an email, the risk of failure amplifies the anxiety of unfamiliarity. Telephone calls now exude untrustworthiness from their very infrastructure.
Going deeper than dropped connections, telephony suffered from audio-signal processing compromises long before cellular service came along, but the differences between mobile and landline phone usage amplifies those challenges, as well.
As a millenial, phonecalls never made sense to me. Unless I actively want to hear your voice (my parents for example) then i have an infinite and vastly superior cadre of resources with which to communicate. Another supreme irritation is when I email a person, but they call me back. maintain parity and answer the email. Accosting me for details just means im going to keep pointing you to the email.
But phones? no. Voicemail hell no. my voicemail is a tire fire of unanswered phonecalls from recruiters, cold callers, advertisers, sales droids, scammers, you name it. Bell make sure my generation never, ever wanted to use the telephone when they turned a blind eye to the fact that it was becoming a haven for garbage calls. comcast and company also turned me off to phones by reminding me how much i absolutely hate hanging on the line, waiting endlessly for some ESL speaker to fumble through my question or "escalate" me to another call center.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Do people have troubles making phone calls nowadays? Is the US telephone network so fragile?
I can't remember having had any trouble making a phone call and have never had a connection dropped, so I'm wondering what this article is about.
If I need to contact someone, I might send a text. I might send an email. Occasionally I might even make a phone call. But what I'll NEVER do is use some silly unknown system like the one listed in this Slashvertisement just because some venture capitalist felt like bankrolling some late-comer to the messaging game.
#DeleteChrome
Look, I love my iMobilePersonalComputingDevice, it does an unbelievable number of things pretty darn well. But as a phone, it sucks. The sound is terrible, the form factor is less than ideal for a phone conversation, the connection can be spotty. For a 5-minute quick check in it's fine, but I had a friend call me yesterday for what turned out to be a 2-hour heart-to-heart about the meaning of life, and it was excruciating.
Yes, texts and other media are often superior to voice. But part of the reason millenials don't like to call is that the phones are terrible. Given the design constraints inherent in mobile devices, that's probably not going to change.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
1. Who encounters problems with voice calls?
There are parts of the Earths surface that have mountainous terrain. This mountainous terrain, which is more and more being used by mankind for habitation purposes, has a tendency to have less robust cell coverage. To those who live near or in mountainous terrain, cell coverage can be spotty and problematic.
2. Why make voice calls at all?
Voice calls are better at reflecting the true intention of the communicating parties. Texts and emails can leave out the true intentions of the message. Voice calls can make discussions much more precise between communicating parties where nuance may be critical.
3. Why the concern about the quality of voice calls via cell?
Ahh, now we come to it. Once upon a time there was a telephony network in the US that was mostly reliable and had high quality. Regardless of your phone, you could expect a high degree of audio communication, via talking(a communication technique pioneered several millennia ago). Communication via "talking" via cell now is akin to cb or walkie talkie in regard to quality.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range