Cranking Up Technology….
Apple’s new IPhone broke a couple of unofficial records this weekend…
Two days after it launched the 3G version of its phone, Apple sold 1-million of ‘em…
When the company introduced the first version, it took 74 days to sell a million.
The company also scored a record 10-Million downloads for IPhone applications this weekend.
And it was also a record setting weekend for failures as scores of IPhone customers couldn’t get hooked up to the network because of software problems…
The IPhone’s just the latest example of cool-tech that we all embrace without a thought.
But it wasn’t that long ago that a simple change for a relatively low-tech device brought about consternation, worry—and massive education campaigns.
I’m talking about the switch from the “pick-up and speak” phone to the dial phone.
Back in the day, the Bell System rolled out the dial phone slowly—in small areas of the country.
And it took a lot of effort to teach folks how to dial a phone.
It wasn’t like the phone was a new thing. It had been around several decades before dials were introduced to replace operators connecting your number…
But phone company officials were scared the public wouldn’t get it.
Part of that education campaign included short-subject movies that were shown at the local theatres in between the newsreels and cartoons—explaining to folks HOW to “dial-it-yourself.”
Some of the movies were better than others content-wise.
My favorite is this little story about a fictional family—whose grumpy ‘ole grandpa becomes the biggest booster of the new dial phones..
Now-a-days, we’re so used to high tech phones and such we generally start using them right out of the box—leaving the instruction books unopened—still in their protective shrink-wrap.
Although we’ve come a long way from the days of the crank-phone—one thing hasn’t changed.
Just like the crank phone days—we’re still periodically shouting into our super cool, high-tech cell phones, “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW??”
—Steve
Link to the video and to the story Steve covered today on NBC-17
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