Testing... testing... testing...
Plateauing? Calcifying? Past expiration date, at age 59?
What prompted the thought: the damn answering machine has stopped working last week. Answering machine? Yes, my top-of-the-line Record-A-Call 690. Made ca. 1986.
I knew something was up when I tried Googling and eBaying my 690: not a single hit (that will change with this piece!) to help me find parts or spare units. No clue who hordes these, and where.
In the past, whenever one of three predictable defects would creep up in my 690, I would cannibalize one of several spares I had found at Goodwill stores a long time ago; but now the cycle of cannibalization was completed.
I knew something was up, any time I would drop a hint in conversation that I was still using an answering machine, now that cloud-based, digital voice mail is the mode for reaching someone eventually who cannot be reached right away.
Amused but polite, forgiving responses to my praise of the 690 gave me a first hint of myself as generic grandpa. At one point I simply stopped moving with the technology of the time. Unnoticed, mostly by myself, I had jumped off at the platform of the last technology I could fully comprehend and embrace, and am now standing there, as I watch every new gadget train leave the station with a mixture of stubbornness and bewilderment.
Had I truly arrived on that platform? A lost cause? A Luddite extraordinaire (same sad outcome)?
Was rattling off my arguments for this technology just a clever but ultimately unconvincing attempt at sugar coating my stage in life?
Here is my pitch for the 690:
* total control of message creation and retrieval- when, and how technically creative I make my messages; when, how often and in what increments and to what exact section of a new message I wish to listen to. (Have you ever tried to get to the exact spot in a digital voice message where a digitally truncated, garbled telephone number was left via bad cell phone connection? Impossible!)
* good audio quality that aids intelligibility and promotes intimacy (read: authority and emotional impact) - both on the outgoing and incoming messages, due to relatively decent resolution of the dual-cassette format
* any message length, both incoming and outgoing (I use 1 hr. cassettes on incoming, for extended, unhurried messaging, avoiding annoying cutoffs to callers)
* auto-fax-reception on the same telephone line, which voice mail cannot accommodate (OK, faxing is not exactly cutting edge stuff either)
* no monthly costs; independence from the rapacious reach of telecom conglomerates which will slowly suck you dry, a few dollars at a time, with their voice menu options, and their 'total portability'
* preservation of priceless messages which can be easily transferred to stable, long-term (ha!) digital (ha!) storage: your kid’s first rambling call, treasured aural memories from your late father, “Happy Birthday” sung by dear friends long ago at places far away
I almost gave up last night: carcasses of armatures and motor assemblies, printed circuit boards and plastic casings of three 690s were strewn across the floor, with only one more new combination of assembling these parts left to try.
Was this mess on the carpet not evidence enough why busy doctors, car salesmen, housewives and anyone else with a hectic life had lost any appetite for reconsidering hardware-based, mechanically intricate and eventually deteriorating message devices like mine? Wasn’t this yet another case where offering a new, if only 75% technically adequate, solution to a problem seemed to fully satisfy 99% of all customers, thus making the less convenient solution obsolete?
I screwed the final case screws into the plastic, and Bingo! the 690 purred again. I found a batch of fresh (!) 60 minute chrome cassettes in the basement, recorded a new outgoing message featuring my newly energized (and relieved) voice, and now I have my personal solution to the problem back.
For how long I can postpone the inevitable, and with what consequence for my (un-) willingness to compromise and embrace future technology will be a subject for another story.
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Topic: Critic At Large Vol. V: Record-A-Call (Read 8119 times)