When landlines were considered dangerous
 

One of the most serious, unreported, disabling, anti-social diseases in America today

https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/w...ief-history-of

Suggest we all stay clear of "Nothing but narcotics …, as destructive of real life and real living as cocaine" 8-\

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

We were completely safe in Britain.

We had the pricing structure of the General Post Office to protect us from any risk of telephone addiction.

David

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

The article overlooks three important facts of human nature:

1. People - especially children - have the need to explore their world and learn as much as they can about it: various forms of 'media' provide for that.
2. People are intrinsically socially-orientated: they need to be able to communicate with others. Hence, forms of two-way communications will always be in demand.
3. Many people fear change - the older generation especially. Such change threatens their established modus operandi and life-style.

Just my viewpoints on this interesting article.

Al.

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

Naturally. But it's not just the elderly, many of them have seen such profound changes that it no longer fazes them. Social media (yes, that again) can give younger people as much unease so the tables are turned, or at least blurred.

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

In what has now become a wearily familiar litany of "bonkers reasons for calling helplines", I heard a radio report at the beginning of April that someone in the UK had called a health helpline on the grounds that they had made a long phone-call to China at the height of its Covid-19 crisis and were worried that they could have caught it down the phone-line....

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

I heard that Howard Hughes used to believe that germs could be spread by phone lines.

One of my school history books had some quotes from the time of the first railways, with people expressing some worries about potential damage trains could do, many proved to by laughably wrong.

I heard that there were some concerns that daytime television would affect productivity, which was why broadcasting hours were restricted for a long time.

Supposedly in South Korea similar reasons were given for their late adoption of colour broadcasting, thinking that if TV became too popular then people would spend too much time watching it.

There was a bit of a worry about colour TV in Ireland of a different kind. It was said that the Irish government were worried that the mass importation of colour sets would effect their balance of payment.

This might explain their drip feed of funds to RTE to upgrade their facilities so it took until the mid 1970s to have a full colour service.

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

Some of the pontifications on new technology have got it quite wrong even in light of things known at the time.

When the first railway was about to be tried, the proponents stated that it could travel as quickly as twenty miles within the hour.

Medical people predicted problems. That, at such profound speed, passengers would experience difficulty breathing and might have nose-bleeds.

They seemed completely unaware that people had been reaching these speeds for centuries by the simple expedient of sitting on a horse. Mind you, some of those people experienced difficulty breathing and ****** noses after they'd 'come off'.

In any field, before making a pronouncement, it is quite important to do some basic research.

David

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

Oh, really!.... the automatically censored word above was the adjective meaning bleeding.

David

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

And Microsoft are going to use AI to select and edits stories for their new service...

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

AI would presumably have read the sentence though, and ignored it. In the meantime hemorrhaging will keep the current technology happy.

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

It's not as though we've never made the opposite mistake, which is much worse, before. At least if something initially believed dangerous turns out to be much safer than originally thought, we're all still around to laugh about it. Not like people who thought something was harmless, until they found out the hard way that it wasn't .....

Re: When landlines were considered dangerous
 

(I read this thread title quickly and registered in my mind 'when landmines were considered dangerous' ;D)