Confusion Calling . . .

You remember caller ID, right? For a few dollars, a little magic box displayed the telephone number of the person who was calling you. What power!

Then the high-tech aftertaste kicked in. Everybody else with such a little magic box could see your telephone number and, horrors, decide not to talk to you. Worse yet, the unlisted phone number you were paying for was popping up on little boxes everywhere.

Ah, but then came caller ID blocking. Those suddenly nasty little magic boxes wouldn’t be showing your telephone number all over town. No sir. But this led to high-tech Aftertaste No. 2. You could no longer screen all of your incoming calls, and you might accidentally answer one from the unworthy masses. Yuck.

Now there’s a new technological solution being offered Californians, but perhaps you’ve begun to catch on. Pacific Bell is offering ACR or “anonymous call rejection,” a service already available in 22 other states. PacBell calls it a “privacy enhancing” tool.

It’s this. People with caller ID blockers are stymied. That’s mass marketese for “I need to see who is calling me, but block my own telephone number from being seen while also blocking the calls from people whose caller ID blocker has blocked my ability to see their blocked telephone number.”

All those folks with caller ID blockers will have to agree to give their telephone number to you first or go through an operator or use a pay phone. That of course also means that you will eventually try to make a phone call and find that you can’t get through because the recipient doesn’t like your call blocker. Meanwhile the nasty little ACR buggers are demanding that you disclose your telephone number. The gall.

The one benefit here is that you will never complain again about the endless number of calls you have to make to those few people you know who avoided this whole high-tech trap by refusing to own so much as an answering machine. This could be worse.