It sometimes doesn’t seem possible that the postal service and landline telephones were enough to perpetuate society. But they were, and there was no sense whatsoever that communication was not happening fast enough. In 1990, a ten-minute phone call from Chicago to Los Angeles cost $1.58 during evening hours and slightly more during the afternoon. While it was always possible to disagree over whether this long-distance rate was reasonable or expensive, no one assumed phone calls should be free. The limitations of time and space were ingrained, as was the concept of a telephone’s calcifying
...more
