Re: Enlightenment

Lawrence Watt-Evans <lwe@xxxxxxx> wrote:
mchary@xxxxxxxxx (Michael Alan Chary) wrote:
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lwe@xxxxxxx> wrote:
David Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"David Friedman" <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
SF reference: The President's Analyst

If you remade that movie today, what would take the place of TPC?

If I remade it, probably the NSA.

But that wouldn't be funny.
I think I'd have it be either Disney or Microsoft.

Google.

Oh, that's good!

Google is nothing like TPC ("the phone company"). Nothing today is
like the phone company. When that movie came out, the phone company
had an absolute monopoly over telephone service. You weren't allowed
to own your own telephone, you had to lease it from the phone company.
You couldn't attach anything to the phone line without going through
an expensive box you leased for a high price from the phone company.
You weren't allowed to unlplug or turn off your telephone. You
weren't allowed to have an extension without both leasing the
additional phone from the phone company *and* paying an extension
charge, even though the extension was on the same phone line. They
would periodically check the impedance of each line, to make sure you
hadn't hooked up an illegal extension or an answering machine. They
charged more for touch-tone service than for rotary dial service, even
though the former cost them less to provide. They reserved the right
to listen in at any time for any reason, and to terminate your service
at any time for any reason. Their "tariffs" had the force of law
behind them -- you could go to jail for breaking their rules. Since
they had a monopoly they could treat their customers with total
arrogance, and the customers' only recourse was to go without phone
service.

This started to change in 1968 with the Carterphone decision, but the
change took decades.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
.

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