Social Interaction With Phones

by Dave Taylor

An interesting thing has been happening to our telephones throughout the world - they've been transitioning from being a person-to-person communications device to being a full-blown information provider.

Consider, without leaving my chair I can not only call up people I know (the easy part) but I can also track down people by dealing with information (obtaining their addresses as well as their phone numbers), get stock quotes, my horoscope, the racing results, summaries of the latest installments of various popular television series but, much more interestingly, can actually meet new people too.

The phone has been extended to be the ultimate in safe social interaction systems - with the rallying cry of "profit" the phone company and the FCC has been licensing not just 976 numbers, but also is now offering 900 service with a vengeance.

[976 numbers, for those that don't know, area special class of phone numbers leased to individuals for just about any legal purpose.  The person calling is charged typically a connect cost (usually about $1.75) and then a per-minute charge too.  The phone company pockets a significant percentage of this revenue, and the owner of the specific service gets the rest.  A 900 number is similar to an 800 number (e.g. the toll-free phone number area code) but the caller is charged a flat $.50 per call to access it.  The numbers operate throughout the continental U.S. and the person who owns the equipment pockets 5 cents for each call placed.]

Somewhat surprisingly, though, I was in England and France a while back and noticed that they're catching on there too!  There are big colorful adverts all over the Tube in London advertising a teen party line, for example.

What's also interesting is that not only do they have "call a recording" systems (also known by the name "dial-a-porn" due to the prevalence of that type of recording being available) and systems where you can call up and leave a "personal ad," also hearing someone else's (randomly), but it's been extended to party lines, like they had in the early days of telephones.

A friend of mine runs a 976 "chat" line where he leases 12 phone lines from the phone company and people calling can connect to up to five other people all in one big conference call.  (There are some built in limitations on the system - by law - they all must terminate within 3 minutes of connect, and by technology - boosting the signal to go to more than four or five other telephones makes it sound awful).

I think that this development is significant for a number of different reasons above and beyond the further utilization of the telephone, however.  It's also an excellent example of the sometimes insidious growth and encroachment of technology on our everyday lives.

But most of all, it's rather a sobering statement on the social lives of people in our fast paced society.

I've sat with my friend as he listens to his own line, or calls other lines to hear how they sound, and most of all I'm struck with the tones of despair and loneliness that all the callers seem to have.  Underneath their babble (and indeed it's surprising that people pay so much to say so little) is a group of people who are fundamentally unable to succeed socially in our society.

I know of a woman, quite attractive, personable, and fun to spend time with, who has used the 976 personals recording numbers to meet men.  She's actually enjoyed spending time with the people she's ultimately met in person, but they all seem to vanish within a week or two.

Yet another person I know claims that I'm the only friend he has that he hasn't met through "phone conferencing," and that he finds it quite difficult to make friends at parties and such.

So, in a rather circuitous way.  I wonder if we're not seeing the usage of these new phone services (and they are used an astounding amount, in excess of a billion dollars worth of phone revenue per year in the U.S.) as indicative of the gradual changes that are transforming our culture and society.

In some sense, they're a direct parallel to computer bulletin board systems - a few years ago when they started to become popular a group of people sprung up that used them as their primary place for making new friends.  The parallels are really quite striking.  (And the current computer conference systems, like the USENET, are an outgrowth of these early BBSes too, with similar demographics.)

The other question that arises, and I believe is the crux of all of this, is where did this clique come from?  Is it a new group of people, these that use technology as a vehicle for social interaction, or is it a natural outgrowth of other factors?

My suspicion is that it's an unsurprising result of the expansion of media and the consequent strengthening of the media's "perfect person."

The expectations in society really have changed quite dramatically in the last few years, I believe.  One must either be part of the popular culture (e.g. the so-called media stereotypes) or they will have a difficult time succeeding socially.

As Clive Barker (director of the new film Hellraiser) says in the magazine Sight and Sound: [a minor character in the original has been turned into the second lead in the adaptation and polished up as a more or less conventional heroine] "I liked the fact that in the novella the girl was a total loser.  You can live with someone like that for the length of a novella.  You can't for a movie."

What exactly is this saying about our culture?

I've strayed a bit off the beaten path, but I would be most interested in hearing about other people's thoughts on this, especially those outside of the United States.