h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The telephone. Its a comunication media we somtimes forget about especaily when talking about communication mediams. Ask any lecturer in professional communications what mediams there are and 9 times out of 10 you will find that there is a million to one chance that they will even consider the phone.

The phone was of course invented in the early 1900's by some dude with a haircut that makes George Negus (http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=www.icm.net.au/static/pictures/georgenegus.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.icm.net.au/speaker.php%3Fspeaker_id%3D159&h=194&w=175&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgeorge%2Bnegus%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8) look like a pansy. Now not that I am agianst good old Mr Negus who spends his time making interesting interviews of mostly completly irrelivent but interesting people look like a pansy its just that he really does look like one. Anyway this tough dude invented the phone allong with his mate Grame Bell who was the one who of course profiterd by it and made Bell Labs, sort of like the Steve Jobs, Billl Gates saga only with the telephone.

Now these guys wanted the phone to break all barriers of communication (yes they did) and thus allow the third world catch up with the first world. This is of corse becuase they didn't factor one thing in. History. Every invention that has ever came allong has always either died out or been the subject of capataism. Every single one has been mass produced and use only for the rich (or relativly well off (well off enougth to afford the phone)) and then been a part of the growing gap between the realtively well off and those who have no money (I defintily mean money that is mostly in the negative region of the number scale, this is of course impossible becuase there is no such thing as negative money, just money which you owe (or are told you owe)). Anyway on with the rant.

The invention led to one of the best things that we in the reltivly rich world call the internet. Without the telfuncus, dog and bone, chatterlone, abachat or whatever you call it we whould have not have the thing we are now conversing so openly on. The Net. We whould also have one other thing we forget so much... The telephone cue and the Answer Machine. Now these two absalootly horrible inventions are easy to get annoyed at, esspecaily when people use messagaes like...

"We at wish to inform you that your call is importnat to us and has been put in a que"

Now the reason for these ques and of course the old 'lift music' rifts that you get when waiting for your call to be answerd is of course that any person willing to wiat is of coruse assumed to have either the patinetce of a jedi or the worthy compliant. This assumption is of course played in a lot of things and is one of the bigeest problems with modern business management. Maximise your profits and cut your losses? Well we could spark a debate about the problems with capatalisium and its more recent neo-conservative ideloigies but thats for furtur debate later when I have the time and the evidence to bring down the major govements. Anyway the phone has now become more of a menace than a use and the poor old dude and his idea's have become lost in our world of sudo-reality and TV-dinners. I hope that you do take one thing from this little talking to and that is that the day will come when you relise that its not all worth all that anyway.

Anyway thats me for now and rember to try the clam chowder.

I hate answer machines. BLARGH!

I spent my entire first year of college not answering the phone because it was never for me and I got tired of taking messages.

Yes I can rember the phone never ever being for me, one of the many reasons I don't have a mobile.

the other day i got a telemarketer on the phone from a phone company and she started her spiel and i said, "have a nice day. im hanging up now." i hung up and not five seconds later i got a phone call from the same lady and she said, "hello, this is how it feels to be hung up on a million times in one day," click!

Yes well I have been a complete bastard and actully sounded interested in the product she was trying to sell and then hanged up. EVIL!

I was very rude once to one who called at 9am on my one day in two weeks to sleep in. Basically it was "Yeah, I don't really care, I'm going back to bed" and hung up.

But I did have fun in high school when they stopped asking for my parents and assumed I was the person in charge of things

I got a prank asking if I wanted to invest in Iraqi airlines.

You should have taken them up on it, maybe suggested that nuclear weapons should be standard equipment on all planes.

I know. I thought of that as soon as I hung up.

Oh well you win some you loose some.

If you have your own phone such that theonly people who call are people who you actually talk to or telemarketers, you can answer it however you want, and scare off the people you don't know. ("Petra's Psychic Pizza Parlor here. We know who you are and what you want. It'll be at your door in 5...4...3...")

Yup thats always fun.

Joes crematorium- you kill them we grill them.

That's a good one! That would scare away telemarketers immediately.

Its off the simpsons with Mikky Jackson.