Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Cars, England, Technology
So after a pretty traumatic week, I’m back.
It has been a bit of a rollercoaster, but all is looking settled and well now.
The patient is doing very well – despite me taking care of them – and so I thought I should get back to ruining other people’s day by writing this blog again. So here we go …
I’m so old I remember when car phones – literally a phone attached in a car – was a new thing.
An innovative thing.
A symbol of success and status. Or a salesman – hahaha.
You could tell which cars had them as they had a little aerial attached to the top of their rear windscreen to help send/receive the phone signal … except, in typical fashion, some companies started selling fake ‘stick-on’ aerials so people could pretend to have the tech, even though they weren’t really fooling anyone given they were in a green – if you could see the colour through all the rust – Austin Metro.
But for those who wanted something real, but cheaper [at least in terms of buying the thing and connecting the thing] … there was a phone system called ‘Rabbit’.
To be honest, Rabbit was utterly shit. Because rather than a phone, it was basically a pager system … where the only way you could make/receive/listen to calls or voicemail was if you were within 20 meters of a designated transmitting station. And there weren’t many of them about. In fact the main places you’d find them was at a Motorway Service Station or a Little Chef cafe. So because of the restriction and limitation of use, it meant you had to keep pulling in to those places to ‘check’ or ‘make’ calls … which was not only inconvenient, but expensive.
Of course I had one.
Even though I had no one to call and no one to call me.
But I remember feeling it was amazing … even more so when Rabbit became the ‘Orange’ network and, as a customer, it meant I could get access to the newest, latest, coolest Nokia GSM phone.
So I did.
Even though I couldn’t afford to call someone or have someone call me.
There’s few things that have given me the thrill and excitement of that phone.
The feeling I was entering a new dawn of independence and innovation.
And I include AI in that statement.
Maybe because mobile phones felt more about freedom whereas AI feels more about productivity. Of course I appreciate what AI can do and allow … but I get more excited by technology that enables me to stretch my boundaries rather than do it for me.
Which is why when I saw this phone in a car recently – not working, obvs – I felt more of a thrill than I will when the next iPhone is launched. Maybe because back then, tech was about liberation and possibility rather than pure profitability and control.