Humanising phone calls and Twitter

I only just discovered this article on Wired where the author tweets out her phone number and rediscovers humanity by talking to people. So far I loved it. She portrayed twitter as the dehumanizing force that it is usually portrayed as these days, and I was feeling convinced.

At the end, she wrote:

I’ve always loved talking on the phone. I adore the subtle ways a phone call can evoke intimacy. You hear the cracks in a voice, the sound of breath, and the patience of thinking.

Which at first made me nostalgic for long phone calls and my teenage years. Then I recognised the very human trait she was describing. I think Douglas Adams said it best:

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

The wired author isn’t wrong. I recognise the feeling, and now I’m interested in tweeting out my own number… But I would guess that we are of the same generation. As usual, the medium is not the message.