I was pushing my infant through our neighbourhood the other day and noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a red phone box. I scoffed inwardly, wondering (rhetorically, you understand) whether anyone actually used phone boxes anymore.

I mean, I’m sure people still use them as a private place to relieve their post-pub bladders, or to publish indecent images of girls and their very expensive telephone numbers. Though in a day and age where we no longer wonder whether Tibetan monks on a remote Nepalese hillside have mobile phones, but rather if His Holiness the Dali Lama uses a Skype app for staying in touch with the CTA, there’s little reason to believe anyone would ever need a public phone to make a call.

Then I saw some movement behind the smeared, dirty glass of the phone box and realised that someone was actually in there, using the phone.

This got me thinking about those old rotary phones of decades past – the no-nonsense tools of early communication that have so quickly become an ironic symbol of a slower, more manual age, and so have enjoyed a tongue-in-cheek resurgence in the homes of nostalgia-tripping hipsters and dour, hip-replaced pensioners.

It saddens me to think that my son will grow up never knowing the rewards that come from diligently drawing one’s finger around the spring-loaded faceplate, ensuring that every numbered hole meets the finger stop in order to create the correct configuration of pulse signals that will culminate in an electrical connection with an actual person. And not just any person: I’m talking about the right person.

With the advent of speed dial in the newer cordless phones and, finally, the mobile phones we use today, we are deprived – nay, robbed! – of the suspense that maybe, just maybe, we are erroneously dialing up a complete stranger instead of our own mothers. My son Hartley will likely never know the mild panic of such a scenario, and subsequent awkward mumbling of the phrase: “Sorry, wrong number.”

Nor will he ever know the distinct drama of hanging up on another individual – not just cutting them off, but the satisfying clatter of the handset as it is slammed down into the cradle at the precise moment of rising tempers, and even that unintentional ‘ding’ of the phone’s inner ring mechanism that this tempestuous impact sometimes engenders.

In ever ‘evolving’ communication-based technology, we gain the illusion of omnipotence: of being everywhere at once and in touch with the world wheresoever we may be at any moment. But in that freedom lies the growing inability to properly appreciate distance, timing, and the potential beauty that exists in that very moment between one number and another, when we could steal another opportunity to think about what we actually want to say.

We think that mobile technology saves us precious seconds of our lives, and this is true, but it also slightly impedes our ability to be present in ourselves, and in the foundations of communication itself.

Just think of those iconic films that made integral use of the phone as not only a prop but a symbol of societal alienation. Many of these nominal classics could not have even been made were it not for the rotary phone. If the realtors of Glengarry Glen Ross had worked from home rather than been ensnared in a claustrophobic maze of public and desktop rotary phones, for instance, the intense interplay of dialogue, major plot points and indeed very essence of the film would have been lost.

And you must admit: Tap ‘M’ For Murder just doesn’t have the same ring.

rotary phone photograph by macinate