I envision that someday, if and when I decide to have children, my child will invariably come up to me at some point and ask this question. Perhaps my children will be sitting in their history class, their holographic teacher relaying to them stories of Alexander Graham Bell, and all of sudden they will flip through a textbook and see a picture of rotary phone juxtaposed next to a landline. My children will be confused and perplexed about how a society functioned with such antiquated machinery. They will come home and ask their mother, aka me, about these antiques. I will regale them with tales of my childhood; negiotiating and coordinating phone time with the family, the amazing day when my dad decided to invest in TWO phonelines (it really was quite glorious) or when cordless phones were unleashed upon the world. I will tell my children about the first time I took the family cell phone to the mall; it weighed 12 pounds and awkwardly fit in my pocket - my father always tried to convince me to clip it to my belt, and there was no easy way to tell him, that was never going to happen My children will ask "well how didpeople get a-hold of you when you're not home?". I will chuckle at the ridiculousness of the question and smile at their ignorance. I will simply state that "well ... some people had a little device called a pager. where people could leave messages. However more often than not, people would go about their day, not imprisoned by the thought that they might miss a call, checked their messages once a day, and returned peoples' calls at their leisure.

Now there is a general assumption in America that everyone has a cell phone and therefore should be accessible 24/7.  Furthoremore there exists a belief that not only should you be accessible at all times but should you miss someone's phone call or do not return it in a timely manner people take it personal. I do have a feeling that the advances in technology we are seeing in phones is contributing to the downfall of future generations. Between advances in phones, the prominence of reality TV in our society, and foam playgrounds the children of these next generations are growing up believing (1) people and information should be readily accessbile (of course only if you possess the expensive technology to access it), (2) you can become famous and get paid money to do absolutely nothing for the entertainment of others (3) that foam and woodchips are natural and necessary building materials for all structures.