Party Line

During the middle of the last century in rural America, the major communication device was a telephone connected to a party line. Often when you picked up the receiver, you would be a party to a conversation already in mid stream. Instant eavesdropping if you will. The proper thing to do would be to quietly hang up and try your own call at a later time. Not very convenient for the communicant.

This week, I exercised a minor coup in the telecommunications force field. The technology now exists to connect older, land line telephones to a black box that works in cellular fashion. So, for $19.95 per month (taxes will be added, I'm sure) a person can engage in real conversations, with a phone, that feels like a phone, and acts like a phone, without the party. If you insisted on being mobile, you could bring the new black box, and the old phone with you in the car, and create your own party in another location.