It was a rushed conversation, a reporter from somewhere who needed a quote to go with his story. I was on my way out, but took his call to lend him a hand. I appreciate the problems reporters have in getting hold of someone when they’re on deadline, and he had tried another lawyer who had no clue what to say, so he referred the lawyer to me.
I wanted to help, as I knew the answers to his questions, but there was a problem. The reporter was calling me from his cellphone. About every third word was lost. Bad connection? Walking around? Beats me. I told him that he was breaking up, and so he did whatever he did and asked if it was better. It was, but that only lasted until he started talking again. It went back to bad almost immediately.
Whether he could hear me was unclear. He didn’t complain, but then, maybe he didn’t care or was so used to bad reception on his cellphone that it was normal for him. Afterward, I wondered whether he heard what I said, or only two-thirds of it. Or less.
My complaints about cellphone reception are nothing new. Long ago, I faced the message on my voice mail from that new arrest that was incomprehensible.
The message is left: “Greenfield, this is bzzzgropppth, My husband got hjustttshsssssh. Call me immediately at 917-deesssstrrrrgh-374. We need you desperately!”
Guess what? You’re not getting a call back. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t want to be your lawyer. It’s that you called on a cellphone.
Here’s a newsflash for those of you who think cellphones are just the coolest thing going: They aren’t entirely reliable. Calls get broken up. Messages are garbled. Even if it’s only one digit in the telephone number, I can’t call you back.
Of course, that was just me grousing, because whoever called would never know why I didn’t call back, when no one showed up. To their ear, their message sounded fine. It requires a level of understanding about the nature of communication to realize that it’s not just the sending, but the receiving, that comprises a viable communication. Not everyone realizes this, and those with a loved one arrested have other things on their mind besides the efficacy of cellular communications.
Since then, dependence on cellphones has become increasingly ubiquitous, with the companies that profit off the shiny pushing the envelope.
Like everyone else, I see the commercials on television for the latest cellphone gadgetry. I know about 3G and 4G, though I didn’t know what it meant until my teenage son explained it to me. I see the maps of cellphone coverage that blocks football games and the ones that fall into bowls of soup at diners, where calling someone in the middle of eating is apparently critical. I get it.
Harsh reality, however, does heed television commercials. Despite the glory of whatever number of “G”s are in fashion today, cellphones are still not perfect. They break up, words get lost, there’s an echo, overtalking cuts off the other speaker. They may be shiny and download a thousand songs in a millisecond (I wouldn’t know, but it could happen). What they do not do is assure adequate communication in times of stress and crisis.
Remarkably, things haven’t improved in the past five years. You would think they would, given the amount of money at stake and the amount put into convincing users that one company’s LTE is far superior to some other company’s LTE, but apparently it’s far easier to talk about clarity than provide it. And we’re far more accepting of bad service as long as it’s on the latest iPhone.
Cellphones are perfectly adequate for calls that have no consequences. If part of the conversation is lost, no big deal. It can be picked up later, whether on a landline or in person. There’s plenty of time to straighten it out if there’s a misunderstanding. When it’s critical, however, the cellphone fails.
Sure, cellphones are ubiquitous and convenient. We can call anytime, anywhere, anyone (except me, because my phone isn’t on). But if you want to be certain, I mean truly certain, that the message has been communicated and received, clearly and completely, the cellphone will not do.
Yet, call after call, person after person, uses a cellphone for calls that matter, calls where the precision of the communication counts, or should count. Where lives depend on a full and accurate understanding of what’s being said, two thirds of a conversation isn’t good enough.
Or is this just the remnants of an old lawyer who still has and uses landlines to speak to people? I can still remember phone calls from 50 years ago where every word was clearly heard and understood. Of the myriad technological marvels the last couple of decades have wrought, the only one that has produced a substantively worse product is the cellphone. Having a clear and audible conversation by phone with someone today is worse, often significantly worse, than it was in the 1960s. Maybe earlier, but I wasn’t using a phone then so I can’t say.
And this is not only okay with you, but not even the slightest problem or concern. Where is the demand for good quality of audibility? Where are the cries that your television commercials are sheer, utter nonsense, and cellphones suck at their primary purpose of engaging in a telephone conversation?
Maybe this is our future, rank mediocrity of the core purpose of a device, provided it’s sufficiently shiny and we are sufficiently passive that we never complain or question. Maybe it’s just a curmudgeon’s expectation that I should be able to hear every word you utter in a telephone conversation, and you should hear mine. Or are you perfectly happy to miss every third word and live with the consequences?
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50 years ago, the phone companies were dedicated to one thing – reliable voice communication that came through clearly, even during a nuclear attack or an extended power outage (the phone exchange in the WTC provided service for 4 days on battery after 9/11 before failing from lack of power). Now, phone companies are doing their best to eliminate all of that old fashioned copper, and turn everything into cellular or voice over IP, neither of which work well all of the time. Add in the apparent preference many people have to use texts instead of actually speaking, and the phone companies have even less incentive to provide good service.
I don’t blame the phone companies. They give us what we demand of them. Well, maybe “we” overstates it a bit.
Fifty years ago I think my parents had a party line.
Hard to say, since I’m older than you are. Cell phones have their uses, but I won’t make important calls from mine if there’s any way to use an old school landline; and, if someone calls me from their cell, I at least ask if they can call me back from a landline. Every now and then, I wonder if we would have been better off had the cell phone never been invented. (I will note that, after a particularly big earthquake here in SoCal, my landlines were down but my cell still worked. My cell allowed me to find out that a few of my closest relatives, who lived closer to the epicenter than I did, were OK.)
Cellphones are perfect for emergencies. I didn’t suggest otherwise. But as a sound means of communication, they’re awful.
I see what you did. You’re playing with “sound,” aren’t you?
A bit, yeah. Rarely does anyone notice, so I feel like I’m just talking to myself most of the time.
Only some emergencies. If it’s a general emergency, the cell towers can become flooded, which translates to “inoperative,” if it’s your call that can’t get through. And, living in hurricane country, I know that cell towers can be blown down, electricity can go out for days or weeks (thus no charge for the cell phone), yet landlines usually manage to get through. They’re not perfect, either, but perhaps less imperfect for real emergencies.
If I recall correctly, emergency services still prefers that people use landlines as it can be hard to locate cell phones and their holders.
I’ve had a cellphone for 20 years and it is my strong impression that call quality has deteriorated badly during that time, particularly the past 10 years. I don’t blame you for never doing business over a cellphone, considering people’s lives are at stake.
Speaking of shoe leather and the whining of the underemployed….they are coming and they need to feed their families.
I should open the window at even money: Will legal services house calls become fashionable before old guys master caller ID technology?
Arrested? Don’t risk your legal future on a dropped call or voicemail. Text your name and address to 1-800-CONNECT. We make house calls and arraignments in 90 minutes or less in the following areas…
Hi, my name is Billy from 1-800-CONNECT and I’ll be your lawyer.
…but before we get started I want you to watch this short clip on my Atomizer 450 mobile device’s 8 inch screen which will explain the best means for you and I to communicate about your case moving forward.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KTc3PsW5ghQ
Martians make lousy clients, unless you’re representing them pro bono. No earthly bank will process Martian currency.
Unless maybe they’re from Yemen. Women are from Venus, but Yemenis are from Mars. http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/9707/24/yemen.mars/ (Assuming SHG will kill this comment, but one never knows.)
Geez, this has really spiraled downward. Damn you, Barleycorn!
Martians, cellphones…
something is missing…
Dragons? Yes that’s it dragons.
Your readers could stand to learn a thing or two about drawing dragons.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=90X5NJleYJQ
You having fun yet?
You’re breaking up.
Whatever happened to than 1997 lawsuit about the ownership of Mars?
Perhaps it was thrown out for timeliness, since the Yemenis presumably
failed to object to the Viking Mars landers 21 years earlier.
Sorry but you are it Keith. The deep game of intergalactic tag has brought dragons, cell-phones, and Mars together for no other reason than a Bob Newhart clip.
You win today with that video.
Thank you for playing along. From from merited every inning.
It might have something to do with your habit of limiting your whining to a meager meal or two out of nine or eleven feasts.
I really get it but you should really buy a backhoe.
Cheers I have to to be Oakland again.
Please excuse the tendons here and elsewhere.
P.S. Fubar, Bay 101 is hard but rich soft only in spots but the Oaks brings some level fun worthy of lunch everyday.
I was sure you’d go with Simon and Garfunkel . . .
This trend, towards increased convenience at the expense of reliability seems to be the norm. Indeed, the modern ethos, where the youngsters desire technology that allows them to be everywhere without being anywhere. If you can talk to them, you can do it on their cell phone. If you want to send written correspondence, you can do it electronically. If you want to meet with them, you can either do so online or via their interweb avatar of some manner or another. Each provides a great deal of flexibility and convenience, for one party at least, but gives up something in quality and reliability. One can imagine, as phone calls proper are further displaced by texting and e-mails and users are demanding that phones behave more like tiny computers than voice-to-voice communication devices, how service will continue to decline. It would not surprise me if we see a popular phone-free cell “phone” in the not-distant-enough future.
I’ll admit that I use my phone chiefly for internet tethering these days. Beats paying for a second contract for my iPad.
I’ve tried to have “texting” communications. They are not satisfying, informative or, in my view, adequate.
“This trend, towards increased convenience at the expense of reliability seems to be the norm…”
Haven’t we been treading this path for centuries? Compare the durability of the stone tablets of the ancients with that of medieval paper, or even modern paper. Consider how the Rosetta stone remained (mostly) readable after thousands of years, but modern floppy discs and cd-drives become unreadable after a few decades, even under optimal conditions.
Your commentary about cell phone conversation reliability is a perfect metaphor for what I’ve observed about even face to face conversations in conducting business in recent years. It seems fewer than one in ten people have the willingness/ability to actually communicate clearly with one person about one event at a time. I am a constant irritant to various people when I insist on checking their work when I see that they are juggling me with various other conversations/tasks.
I’ll give an example that almost everyone has seen – does your bank teller take a phone call or talk to her co-workers while she/he is conducting your transaction? Is there any reason to expect he/she to be accurate every time (which you expect of a financial transaction) when that is allowed?
The multitasking phenomenon is a curious thing. Those who do it laud their capacity to do many things at once. Those who don’t note the multitaskers do many things at once, all poorly.
The ubiquitous nature of the cell phone is what irks more than the occasional garbled call. With the office landline my secretary intercedes with calls, especially when I am meeting with other clients,or working on a particular case that cannot be interrupted. Now, the frequency of cell calls, particularly from clients in NYC ( I am in the mountains about 2.5 hours north) interferes with those activities because the cell in either on my desk or in my pocket. It takes a certain discipline to simply ignore the call, other than emergency calls – even my secretary knows to interrupt with an emergency. Clients,however, know that the cell is ever present.
I have a trick to prevent this from happening. I turn it off when I’m in the office.
3g became 4g when the carriers flipped a switch in their marketing departments.Really…. at least initially.
Why is it people get pissed at me that I don’t have a cell phone?
Do people actually think I should be reachable whenever they deign to call?
Yeah, I could turn it off, but what happened when I had a cell and did that is I left it on the dresser for months.
I never give out my cell number. It’s for me to call out, not for others to call me. I am not available 24/7.
So the conclusion to the Sunday whine is privacy never sacrifices clarity and clarity is disappointed with cellular.
You lie esteemed one.
They still sell flip up-s that have programable ringtones and text.
They even “feels” like a miniature real phone.
Don’t worry this empty nest phenomena when concluded should free your mind enough for science.
You might like it.
I was a late adopter of cell phones, waiting until well into the 21st century to get one, but now I am a convert. Certainly, in my experience, the odds of a cell phone garbling words are many orders of magnitude lower than the odds of me not being near a landline. Secondly, the odds of cell-phone-garbled words on a voicemail leading to a bad result are orders of magnitude lower than the odds that the voicemail owner accidentally deletes the voicemail before hearing the message. There are no certainties in life, just probabilities, and cell phones seem to me to improve your odds.
If you say so. My experience, obviously, is vastly different.
Yours and everyone else over 35.
So you work in a corn field? Most of us don’t. Being near a landline is not exactly a huge challenge for most lawyers (or grown ups).
Again, accidental voicemail deletions are not really a problem for most lawyers (or grown ups). On the other hand, garbled words are a constant problem. You seriously need to consider whether you’re hanging around with the wrong people in the wrong places. Your experiences are, shall we say, bizarrely different than the rest of us.