bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

We ate at Dairy Queen today. Four young folks set across from us and all were on their smartphones. We had finished eating before any of them spoke to each other.

You go out with your friends for a good time and all you do is play with your phone, something you could do at home by yourself. Doesn’t make sense to me.

Lucasdv123

I made a good career out of it.i installed them back in the day when we only had copper wiring.did that for 34 years out of my 40 year career.i also repaired lines when we had big rain storms.i actually volunteered to go to the hurricane ike restoration in the Houston area for about 7 weeks.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Our landline is with Ooma, as recommended here. They charge nothing for this. All I pay is $6.73/month tax.

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

Several landline service providers want to quit the landline business due to the low, and decreasing demand. If they do that, I think the wireless providers should become regulated entities in their stead - maybe we would then see some more affordable pricing.

If the big carriers quit landline service what happens to those last landline hangers on? And who gets to mine all that copper hanging on the poles or buried in the ground that is abandoned? My hometown has some streets with four or more cables that are probably way less than half used for the remaining land lines - we called them elephant fences in the trade. Consolidating the remaining landlines into fewer cables is a costly and time consuming process that the local service providers just don’t want to spend the money to do.

Stan

One Rude Dawg Loc: Athol, ID

Yes society is creating a mess of idiots that can not communicate except through their phones or do anything without their phone. Society is in big trouble.

halraiser

The party line days! Read the account of a young woman who went off to off to college. Word got back to the home town that she had a beau. Summer vacation rolled around and one day the phone rang in her home. "I'll be there, here's the train number and time."

As a result of that phone call, every gossip in town was at the train station when, as previously arranged, he drove up to her house in his car.

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

And the smartphones also have a really handy calculator. As a result, my young coworkers grab their phone whenever math is needed. I too use an “old fashioned” electronic calculator but for serious calculations, not the simple ones my coworkers do.

Like so many things we do, if we don’t use it we lose it. My cursive handwriting was never very good and it’s gotten worse as time goes along because I don’t use it that much. I probably need to make a point to do so. Modern conveniences are great but they turn us into idiots.

BebuLamar

I don't know if any company still offers real landline like before. Most are now VOIP which use the internet connection whether it's coax cable or fiber not the old copper wires like before.