It’s Progress: I Touch No One and No One Touches Me
I am a rock, I am an island. Song lyrics by Paul Simon When it comes to avoiding unwanted human contact, there is no bigger champion of the cause than myself. It would follow, then, that I should be the first on my block to sign up for a new GTE phone option known as “Call Block.”
The option has been around since March. For an extra $3 a month you can program your home phone to act as a surface-to-air-missile, intercepting incoming phone calls before they get to you. By programming a simple code into your phone, you can block as many as 12 different callers from getting through. If one of the blocked callers tries to phone you, the caller will hear a recording: “Your call has been blocked.”
Aside from just being naturally edgy, why am I jittery about this?
GTE sells the service as a means of “control.” Obviously, they mean control by the person meant to receive the call, not the person making it. But because Call Block is reversible, you can un-program the blocked numbers if you’re feeling more receptive later.
“It’s a lifestyle thing,” says Jaya Koilpillai, a GTE spokeswoman. “Everybody needs more control over who can access them by phone.”
Koilpillai says Call Block is the most popular of the new round of services offered by GTE, with more than 18,000 customers signing up for it as of June 30. That number is increasing weekly, she said. Of those people requesting at least one feature from GTE’s package of new services, Call Block is the most popular, with more than 60% wanting it.
We shouldn’t be surprised, really. It’s just social evolution.
Call Block is merely the latest layer of protection to wrap around us as we human beings continue our march toward dehumanizing the planet. (Bet you won’t find that explanation in the GTE brochure!)
We live in communities surrounded by walls.
Get past the walls, and you find security gates.
Get past the gate, and we have bars on our windows and locks on our doors.
Inside the house, we’re further protected by answering machines in which humans talk to machines.
And now Call Block. The cocoon is weaved tighter and tighter.
According to my calculations, by the year 2072 someone in California will have lived an entire adult life without coming into physical contact with the outside world.
That person will have been born in vitro , of course. His parents will have never met. He will immediately be transferred by masked and gloved medical personnel from a test tube to an incubator.
He will have graduated from the public school system after taking all classes at home on TV.
When he gets hungry, he won’t go to a restaurant; he’ll order takeout and have it left on his doorstep.
He will never go to the movies or theater, preferring instead to punch in a code on the television and watch videos.
He will do whatever shopping he needs through the Home Shopping Networks, which will be available on 30 of his 75 channels.
By the time he’s an adult, he will have made about a dozen friends, all from hooking up with them and chatting with them over his home computer.
From time to time, he’ll wonder about meeting someone of the opposite sex, so he’ll explore the possibilities of computer dating. He’ll see a collection of videos of possible dates but will decide they aren’t good-looking enough, and so he’ll drop the idea.
Feeling spiritually empty, he’ll contemplate religion. He’ll think about going to church, then remember that 10 TV channels offer Sunday programming. He prays alone at home and hums to the hymnals as the congregation sings on TV. As they pass the offering plate from person to person along the pew in church, he writes a check.
He thinks about going to visit in person some friends he met on the computer, but they send him a video instead, and he watches that late at night.
Occasionally, he will get lonely and try to call someone. He gets the same message every time: “Your call has been blocked.”
He, in turn, will have 10 calls blocked on his phone. He realizes he only knows seven people and so he makes up three other numbers just for fun.
On his deathbed, realizing he’s feeling poorly, he makes a last-ditch attempt to contact someone in person. He calls 911 and asks them to come as quickly as possible.
He dies just moments before they arrive and doesn’t feel their touch.
And a rock feels no pain, And an island never cries. --Concluding lyrics to the Paul Simon song
Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.
