Dragging the Past Through the Future
Sitting in an almost deserted tube carriage on the way to Heathrow yesterday, I think I saw the most retro-techno thing ever.
A family get onto the train (middle-aged parents and 20-something son) and sit opposite me. Almost immediately the father pulls out his mobile phone and starts yapping away loudly. That’s ok though, because I have headphones and lots of noisy rock and roll to hand for situations just like these, so I tune him out.
He’s making a lot of calls though, each a few minutes in length, and with each call there’s some nagging oddity about the situation that trying to kick its way to the front of my brain. It’s a long train ride, so I’ve got a lot of time to get more and more puzzled by what exactly seems weird about this situation. I mean, it’s a normal enough scene, guy talking on the phone on the tube. It’s a pretty modern phone, he’s not dressed oddly, he (thankfully) doesn’t smell, so what’s wrong?
Then, one stop from the end of the ride I figure out what I’ve actually been seeing happen for all of this time. For each and every one of these many, many phone calls the guys been making, to find the number to dial he’s been pulling out this ratty old address book, flipping back and forth through handwritten entries to find the person he’s looking for and then manually entering the number!
So close to - and yet so far from - fully embracing the future!