Welcome to the PartyLine

Astride the back of my cousin's Honda (shudder), wearing my Harley jacket, headed through Southern Illinois, well, I had time to think. It wasn't easy to take photos. Singing was all for the wind. Reading was inappropriate behavior. I thought.

One topic which played in my mind was what we call progress. Let's see what I mean. When the telephone was first invented and started to become a regular fixture in households it was a wooden box on the wall. People "shared" a line, sometimes begrudingly, but that's the price they paid. Each "party", or owner, had a designated ring/signal. The decision to answer was based on whether it was your ring and/or whether or not you were snooping on your neighbors and answering their calls as well as your own. It truly was an open line.

Advance a century and a decade or two...we have phones with designated rings. Ah, the obvious, right? But, we also are right back to party lines - such worries about privacy and yet phone calls can be listened to because security is just not where we all think it should be. Email can be invaded and snatched away. Photos or videos end up on global tubes/posts.

The world is one big party line.

As fast as we have progressed in providing new and fancy communication tools the fact remains that the best way to keep a secret is to not tell it to anyone.

Duh.