== The great untethering = By Mark Morford

Who will lament the end of the traditional land-line phone? Shall we have a party?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/08/13/notes081308.DTL&nl=fix

I often wonder if there shouldn't be some sort of ceremony, a grand recurring ritual for aging and beloved and soon-to-be-defunct tech, something involving fire and tequila and long howling laments into the night intermixed with lots of hugging and laughter and bawdry tales told by the hoary old-timers who remember it all, albeit hazily, warily, spittingly.

Currently marked for imminent obsolescence and therefore perhaps deserving of just such a grand sacrament: the land-line telephone. Oh yes indeed.

Ah, what a time it was (the old-timers will croak dulcetly), a freewheeling, rose-colored, piss-in-the-streets era full of grumpy Pac Bell repairmen and innocent prank phone calls and "Is your refrigerator running?" coupled with amazing multi-hour chats until dawn with a new lover, sans the slightest thought of silly irritants like minute overages or random signal dropouts or hey wait a sec honey I'm getting a text message from Brussels and my battery's about to die and oh my God I think I just pressed "erase all numbers" by accident are you still there are you still there hello? Hello? Hello?

There will be anecdotes. There will be fond memories of, say, calling that beautiful blonde girl from high school physics class and hearing her mellifluous, absolutely angelic high school voice say "Hello?" and then you hanging up really fast, breathless and riddled with quivering love, safe in the surety that she could never know exactly who it was who kept calling and sighing and hanging up because lo, it was a time before Caller ID and before Instant Callback and well before Caller GPS Tracking, well before everything changed. Again. ...

i like it

i got tired of being available 24/7

they can leave a message, i'll be home in a few hours, it can wait til then.

I haven't had a cell phone in almost two years

I miss it less and less.

this guy sounds kind of crazy to me

that's precisely why I never got a cell phone and have no desire to go wireless . . . I, too, am loathe to be available 24/7 . . . my theory is, and always has been, "if it's important, they'll leave a message -- or call back" . . .

what I find amusing is the weird looks I get when someone asks for my cell number and I tell them I don't have one . . . it's like "are you for real? . . . how can you survive?" . . .

I sometimes wonder what some of these folks will do when the economy really tanks and they can no longer afford their cell phones, Blackberries, and all the other techno-gadgets that rule their lives . . . there will probably be a new disease coined, something like "Cell Phone Withdrawel Syndrome" . . .

and rest assured the drug companies will waste no time coming up with a very expensive pill to ease the pain . . .

but I carry a cell in case the car breaks down (which it has twice in the last year)

I'm near Bethesda Naval and the Prez's helicopter fleet goes over. If you're on a cordless, weird things happen.

I like my landline.

My wife likes paying bills I guess.:-)