mattratto

Time March 30, 2006

When I was a kid, you could dial (and I actually mean dial) a number and an automated voice would recite the current time. This service was provided by the local phone company (a subsidiary of Ma Bell to be sure,) which was also in the business of renting and selling phones. At this point in time, the only place to get a handset was the actual phone company itself and you were pretty much restricted to two models – wall-hung or table-top – and two colors – a kind of tanny beige or black (see Ford and his ideas about consumer choice.) Back then I must have dialed time a lot because I remember the day a new message came on the line. More to the point, I remember it word for word. It said:

"Pamper her with a petite telephone. It's small, it's smart, it lights! Time, 7:49."

Now, I'm not sure of the actual time (I chose 7:49 because if it was a Thursday Magnum PI came on at 8 and I might have been calling to see how soon it started,) but the rest of the message is right on.

"Pamper her," "It's smart!" (Which for those of you not up on 60's L7 lingo means "chic" or "stylish"…) What a crazy example of a particular moment in history.

It's hard to miss how particular sorts of relationships between men and women are embedded in the message, i.e. women should be "pampered", they want "smart", "petite" artifacts, and men are responsible for making the technical decisions that serve these needs. Also, you gotta love the way the "time" number is made to simultaneously serve the personal needs of the customer and the burgeoning commercial requirements of the company. By incorporating a marketing message within a service message, continental (the "baby bell" in my area,) was taking little steps towards a more complete commercialization of the telephony infrastructure.

So what's my point here? Well, first off, I wanted to provide a quick example of the kind of work I do. While my research addresses how technologies and societies are made together, I always try to keep my focus on the little things.

I understand that old phone message not just as the "sign" of a set of tropes about gender and technology that were particularly prevalent in the past (and of course still partially remain today,) but also as a way those tropes were created and maintained. The phone message isn't just an indicator of the increasing commercial needs of telephony in the US, but a way these commercial needs were made manifest.

Also, this message provides a entry in to some of the design choices made by the phone company. You can just see the phone execs sitting around saying something like, "We really need to get more phones in people's homes, how should we do it?" and some designer replying, "well, we could make a phone for women that's small and stylish!" This is a great example of how technology decisions, social choices, and economic issues are all interwoven – who would have thought that the old time message, remembered so much in the future, could be so revealing of the past?

Time seems such a fluid construct and yet, through our interactions with the built environment, we butt up against all the time. Technologies, like the "petite, "smart" phone, are powerful social artifacts that help create particular realities.