Young Man yells at cloud
Ramblings inspired by conversations with my Grandad.
My grandad is a storyteller. A conversation with him wouldn't be complete without a reminiscence or a well told tale from his past. Let me abridge one of his more frequented stories.
See, he had this friend, she moved to Australia. When they wanted to catch up they had to book a slot in advance and be waiting by the telephone at exactly that time. If executed correctly across time zones, a call would come through and on the other end of the line was the friend who he could then speak to.. to wish them a happy new year or whatever the rare occasion was. There he would briefly remain. Talking to his friend on the other side of the world. It was magic… and it cost a pound a minute!
The story is of course an invite to laugh at how slow and complicated some things we now take for granted used to be. If indeed they existed at all. He's not above a light hearted sort of self deprecating “I'm old enough to remember when [insert any pre-internet thing].” Though, as with all good stories, he does have a point beyond simply raising a laugh and I happen to think it's a good one. My mum got a good deal of my grandad's storytelling prowess, though if the rails existed in her original point she would soon take you off them. All the better off you'll be for the diversion when you arrive at the destination. I do think, if I could choose to inherit one thing, It would be this trait. Time then for a Brennan to embrace his Porter side, inspired by my grandad’s take on a changing world.
I recall a particular memory, pointless but profound it seems to me now. I was in Primary School and waiting by the school gate with friends waiting to meet our parents, but we were all gathered around a phone. I think it was a flip phone, maybe a Sony Ericsson or Motorola. Most of the people I knew that had a phone just used it to send a text to their mum if anything happened, or to see if they could stay round a friend’s house for dinner tonight (Tina says it's okay). In this instance I think someone had sent a text to a number on the back of a magazine to download a song, and they were showing off the result. In fact I think some of us tried to record the song and then use that file recording as a ringtone? It can't have been very successful, maybe we were able to get a short snippet of muffled, tinny music that we could play back at the quiet of home. Still, it didn't dampen our excitement. It was pretty mind-blowing if someone came in with a new phone: Louder speakers, a camera with a megapixel, a game other than snake! Of course, if your family let you take a phone to school it was off, in your bookbag with your Pokémon cards and Hotwheels, until the end of the day.
In truth, I can't remember who got an iPod first, or when I first heard the term angry birds, or stopped buying SIM card top ups and started buying iTunes vouchers. I think my first time using a touchscreen might have been my mum's iphone (3gs? Is that a thing?). At least, I remember it was an upgrade from a pebble phone. If I had a phone in my pocket, it was such an inconsequential item to all that I recall about the best days of my childhood so as to be entirely irrelevant.
I find myself searching for a tipping point, a change in the winds from analogue to digital technology in ubiquity. If you say the iPhone I say the mobile, another says the landline or fax and my grandad says whatever his pound a minute method was called. People after us may say social media, or whatever else we can cook up to transform communication.
I recognise the futility. Whatever step change you point to will seem a ramp from afar. My concern is not the thing, it is the exponential rate of the things. Has all of history felt like a precipice?
I do not advocate for an abolition of technology or a halt to all digital progress. How many extra half an hour's outside have been bought for the price of a text? How much freedom gained from the security of a mobile phone in pocket? There is a simple beauty in our need to stay connected. It's a need for contact or at least proof of wellbeing, if only for the benefit of an anxious parent. What better tool could a species selected for communication hope for than a mobile phone? Lest I mention the internet.
Our knowledge is shared more widely than ever, universities and researchers collaborate across borders and seas instantaneously. I work a 9-5 entirely remote from my colleagues. I send these ramblings into the ether of the internet. We see, experience, and interact with individuals entirely distinct in physical space - all joined online in one form or another. My Grandad tells his story not as a homage to some golden age where everything was better and right and good. He tells it because it’s his to tell. In his time from Salford to the Lune Valley through all the life between, he has experienced a transformation of social structure that demands exposition. He shares his experience as he experienced it. I cannot cast my mind back half a century or more. Yet I would contest any older generation who claims to wear the crown of change based only on a tally of years.
I cannot tell you the story of when it first became possible to send a fax, or speak to someone who wasn’t in the same room as you. Yet I am convinced that the pervasiveness of digital technology and online communication we see today has in a large part to thank the kids that didn’t want to be left out of conversations. Conversations that could for the first time continue outside of school hours. It is my generation that has been immersed in transformative communication technology since its inception. Not from the sidelines or some top down view - we grew in parallel with the increasing freedom of unlimited communication. We didn’t adapt an existing way of life to incorporate a new tool, we didn't have to. We absorbed radical digital technologies without consideration or direction - unconsciously we integrated it into our lives. It was fun, we were kids. We changed, or were changed with it. This is, as I see it, change unprecedented. Change that dwarfs any lived example my mum or grandad could raise.
