Phil Lapsley - Exploding the Phone (2013)
Let’s talk about nostalgia.
I’m so nostalgic for the 2013-2015 era that I haven't upgraded from an iPhone 6, so I can live comfortably in my low-tech echo chamber and avoid hyper-connective developments like TikTok and Instagram Reels which I know would be fatal for my long-fought-for, recently-revived attention span.
like it or not, but this is technology at its peak. everything since then has been a slow decline
But these days, nostalgia drenches everything. You have, according to various internet self-proclaimed cultural expert magazines, teens who are nostalgic for an experience they’ve never had listening to mallwave, Instagram accounts like Velvet Coke dedicated to highlighting fashions of the 90s that, until the Kardashian/Fashion Nova/BBL era, were considered very grave mistakes. People are so nostalgic for simpler times that they be romanticising Motorazor flip phones and velour tracksuits, and the days where celebrity paparazzi picks were plastered over thousands of magazines that have since folded
And, you know what? I get mad nostalgic too.
Nostalgic for the times long gone before Anonymous was infiltrated by the FBI, and equated with the alt-right, before their members were either jailed or snapped up by influential tech companies, when they were just a crew of young kids punch drunk on the power that being able to hack into the poor password protection of multinational corporations to expose their sins might give a 17-year-old 4chan lurker (not to mention helping stage the Arab Spring, support people in uprising from tyranny etc).
Highly recommend this book
I recommend this book a little less
But what’s funny about my obsession with computer hackers, is it all led one way - and that was toward realising that the very first hackers weren’t just geeks hanging out on old message boards shielded by anonymous user names.
The very first incarnation of the computer hacker didn't hack into computers at all - they hacked into phone systems.
It’s NERDY AF, but, if you skim read past the technically detailed pages, THIS is one of the greatest, most action packed books I think I’ve ever read in my life and I thoroughly recommend it to all people who are filled with joy by tales of human ingenuity!
It centres around the ‘phone phreak’ community, a name given to a loose group of people who all, one day, spontaneously began messing around with the phone network and discovering ways to take advantages of loop holes in the primitive system. Because, you see, before the phone network was run by computers, it was run by actual people.
You picked up the phone and the operator on the other end asked who you wanted to dial. You told her, she’d connect you - voila. Even more instant than Siri.
Obviously, aside from the fact that certain phone switches only connected with certain others, so to make a long distance phone call you might need to be connected with like five or six other long distance phone centres until you finally found one who could connect you with who you wanted to speak to.
Anyway, these phone phreaks carefully studied the makeup of these phone switchboards and they discovered a few interesting things.
After careful study, trial and error, etc they found that Bell Phones had certain test lines that you could call for free, and acted as impromptu conference calls for anybody else who also happened to call the same number at the same time. Sure, there was generally a busy tone playing while you were connected, but you could speak over it, and connect with any other stranger who happened to share your interest in playing with phone lines - a whole community formed this way, which anticipated the internet message board in its early incarnations.
RIP to the early golden days of the net
More enterprising phone phreaks realised that you could invent devices that mimicked the tones sent down the analogue phone network and secure yourself long distance phone calls for free. In fact, making these devices is exactly how the founders of Apple got their start in tech - and almost ended their careers, too, until a narrow escape from the FBI
It was a glamorous time - nerds, drugs and constant surveillance from tech-stunted authorities wondering exactly how and why so much fraud and theft was being committed involving the telephone system.
But, all good things must come to an end.
As Bill Acker is quoted as saying: “Right now, we have more control over the phone system than we will ever have again.”
The telephone company, sick of being ripped off, were eager to find a solution. They also had a monopoly on telephone service and, thus, unlimited funds at their disposal to upgrade their network. And so digital phone services began replacing the analogue dial tones, and so the interest factor of exploring non-standardised and regionally different phone system was eradicated as everything became the same.
I think that’s what drives my nostalgia for the past. I’m so bored by this globalised standardised culture where everything is all the same. Same trends on Netflix and same two phone companies making all the phones and forcing you to do the same boring updates, and same Google and Facebook that everyone uses to communicate, being followed by the same ads based on the same algorithms all around the internet, with Spotify and YouTube dedicated to bringing you more of the same content that you viewed and listened to last time blah blah blah, etc etc etc.
But then again, just like Bell Telephone corporation was broken up for having a monopoly on phone services in the 1980s, so Facebook is facing a similar type of lawsuit.
And, what I think this book demonstrates that can’t ever be broken, is human ingenuity. It is human nature to seek to overcome limitations of any kind, and like skater kids always ride their bikes pursued by security in the mall, so do the latest trends become routine and then boring and attention turns to something different and fresh and new.
So, what will be next? I look forward to seeing.
~~~so n0stalg1c 4 dis p@st i n3v3r 3xperi3nc3d~~~
