An ad for A T and T 1910 era. “The Comfort the telephone affords the mothers in the homes of American cannot be measured.” Stay in touch with your kids. The campaign played into mother’s fears for her children in an era of exponential change. The Nicholsons use the phone for local calls, but rarely for long distance. That’s why I have the http://www.tighsolas.ca/ letters!!
I’ve only met one person in my entire life who didn’t own a telephone. She was a divorcee from Toronto (of British extraction) who had come to Expo in Montreal the summer of ’67 for a day visit with her teenage son and toddler in arms.
My mother and I met her in the long, long, LONG line-up to the British Pavilion. We got to talking and seeing that her baby girl was in a terrible mood from the oppressive heat, my mother offered to watch the child while she had a quiet visit to the pavilion.
And the stranger agreed to it! Imagine.
I remember her well. She was tall, thin and haggard; I recall she apologized for looking like “like the wreck of the Hesperus,” as she combed back her straight stringy grey-brown hair with her hand.
I felt sorry for her. She told us she didn’t have a telephone! We were ‘poor’ but we had a telephone. (There was no caller ID in those days and my father always instructed me to answer and say he wasn’t in to creditors.)
I felt sorry for poor people as a child, probably because I could relate.
Looking back, I suspect she was a teacher as they were hiring teachers from the UK in those days.
Yesterday, on TV, there were two news reports, which, put together, worry me greatly.
One item was about the continuing Recession in the US, ‘the bad jobs report’ and the other about rising fees for bandwith on Canadian Internet Providers.
In the 60′s, hey, in the 80′s, families had few expenses in the Telecommunications vein.
You paid out 20 bucks or so a month for a phone, if you didn’t use long distance.
A phone was a necessity, for even the poorest of families. In case of emergency.
Today, well, my husband tells us we pay 57 a month just for the Internet, and we hardly download anything. When ‘the kids’ are home our downloading greatly increases.
And that doesn’t cover the cell phone expenses. Or the Satellite TV. Or the cost of movie downloads on said TV.
Internet, like a cell-phone, is considered a necessity today, by many people, even A RIGHT, and not only by the young kids who are hooked on social networking and songs and movies, and the mothers who want to keep track of their kids (in these perilous times with a pervert behind ever tree (sic) – but by policymakers.
In some jurisdictions (not Canada, where we apparently use YouTube more than any other population) people at the top pay lipservice to the RIGHT to FREE INTERNET.
Othewise how can poor families afford to pay for it? Especially with these rising cost of bandwith in Canada? The rising price of Internet AND the rising price of food is an ominous mix.
Do struggling families go without FOOD before going without Internet? Do they eat more and more CRAP from fast food joints.
At one time, almost everyone was waxing ecstatic about the Internet being a democratizing force, one that would level the playing field, and allow the poor and the socially-isolated to get a leg up, even become wealthy with the right idea.
But, despite the feel-good get rich quick narrative of the Social Network (Hey, the kid was at Harvard,remember) I fear that the Net is in danger of becoming another ‘addiction’ like smoking and gambling that will keep the poor down and make them ever poorer – and more desperate. A tool of control and oppression.
It might even prove to be just that to the dwindling middle class. Many of us are but one lay-off away from having to choose between the diverting pleasures of the Internet and a good meal.
Just a depressing thought on a bleak, overcast, January day. I think I’m in need of a bit of Mammi Mia’s dazzling pastels as a pick me up.
Where’s the remote?
