Let us all savagely mourn the death of the Machine Age. A well-designed machine is a triumph of the human imagination no less than a sketch or a sonnet. The aesthetic pleasures of a typewriter should not be taken lightly. Certainly, human beings still create gadgets. But with the advent of the Machine Age there has been a diminution in both size and grandeur.
Therefore, it makes a certain sense that there are rotary phone devotees among us. There are a few retailers who will sell digital phones that look like the rotary models, and a few companies that sell legitimate rotary phones. Remarkably enough, they still work on domestic phone lines. Besides, there's something dignified about the rotary phone: the shiny black exoskeleton, the somber heft of the handset, the agitated two-tone chime. They remind one of a time when consumer items were built to last, or at least, not designed to fall apart. They likely remind people of a time when it was assumed that their own lives could have heft and stability as well.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
In the words of the Yip Yip Aliens, "BRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIING!!!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4VNMERVsC4
It really is an endearing sound, isn't it? I think I might well buy one of these phones, should I ever have actual money.
There was an amusing homage to the alien muppet thing on Drawn Together.
I had forgotten how brilliant those aliens were. Thanks for the link.
Post a Comment