"Reach Out and Call Someone"
by National Building Museum curator Susan Piedmont-Palladino
Magic, special, necessary, ordinary. That’s the life of a technological object, whether an airplane or a dishwasher. The telephone has followed that path twice. As sociologist Claude S. Fischer described it in America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, the telephone changed “from miraculous in the nineteenth century to mundane in the mid-twentieth century to mandatory by the end of the twentieth century…eventually becoming a basic constituent in the material culture of modern life.” Liberated from the cord and outlet, the cell phone traced that same arc in a much shorter time. In little more than two decades the cell phone evolved from brick to flip phone to smart phone. Now making a phone call is just one of its many capabilities.
When Alexander Graham Bell patented his invention in 1876, it was a new technology in search of purpose. The marketing team at Bell, the one and only phone company until a generation ago, envisioned that people would listen to concerts on the phone, receive the latest news, meet new people, and form new associations. Critics worried that people would use the phone to gossip, waste time, and foment conspiracies. They were both right. It just took a long time for the technology to catch up with human imagination.
Critics also feared that the telephone would lead us to isolate ourselves geographically. Why would we live in a city if we could just “reach out and touch someone” by phone? The critics underestimated our desire to be with people despite the infinite reach of global communications. We’ve become very good at using technology to amplify our own gregariousness. As our infographic shows, metropolitan areas are dense with population and dense with communication. Calling, texting, instant messaging, and tweeting have only added to our networking tool kit.
Our phones are no longer tethered at home but have come out into the world with us. What once were private conversations in homes or offices now happen in public space. Our cities once were full of tiny glass spaces designed to separate public and private. We called them phone booths. Even Superman would be hard pressed to find a phone booth today. Cell phones and wi-fi have turned the phone booth inside out, filling our city streets and plazas with people.
We don’t exchange information anymore through fixed points in the city or in buildings. The atmosphere buzzes with communication among friends, strangers, servers, and bots. Wonder when the next bus is coming? There’s an app for that. Is there a streetlight out on your block? Call your city’s 311. Can’t see your friends in the crowd at the ball game? Call them. See an injustice? Call for help. Call to bear witness. Call to be heard. Call to action. Call out of courtesy. Call out of concern. Call out. Just call.
Alexis de Toqueville, astute observer of all things American, marveled at our capacity for community-building and hunger for information in the 1830’s. “The best-informed inhabitants of each district constantly use their information to discover new truths that may augment the general prosperity; and if they have made any such discoveries, they eagerly surrender them to the mass of the people.” It’s no surprise that our inventions since then have magnified our abilities to be informed, make discoveries, and share them as widely as possible. We’ve been working on making our cities intelligent for a long time, developing one technology after another, even as we both relish and fear the consequences. The telephone, magic and ordinary, has been the technology for everyone. What makes a city intelligent? You do. It’s in your pocket.
*The data used in our country infographic has been updated as of 4/12/2011.
