5 ms·

Article plays up the fumbling for effect, but is otherwise spot on. The PSTN was immensely overbuilt. Old Western Electric equipment is, literally, built of tem

Article plays up the fumbling for effect, but is otherwise spot on. The PSTN was immensely overbuilt. Old Western Electric equipment is, literally, built of tempered steel, from the crossbar switches in the CO to the red telephone on the desk. The human artifice erected in between, electrically and mechanically connecting a microphone at one end to a speaker at the other, was staggering in its analog complexity, and yet it worked with astonishing reliability. And, to put it in modern terms, all of it was for just one single "app:" voice calls. It all began moving to digital relatively early in the 60s, but even well into the 90s many systems were still functionally analog, with copper wire pairs carrying analog signals in a /not-metaphorical/ loop between callers. Today we have comparatively infinitely greater capacity and capability, and there's no going back, but the "core experience" of the modern voice "app" is without a doubt a pale reflection of its original progenitor.

svachalek 4y ago
Absolutely. Same with turning on a TV these days. People used to flip a switch, now it's a highly technical process that takes a few minutes.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Yes, this is the point I wanted to raise. It's not just phones. The first minute of everything is torture now. It takes minutes to turn on the TV and navigate menus and establish connections to sources and get to the point where everything is buffered and playing smoothly. I watch a lot less TV than I did when I was younger, despite the vastly expanded amount of content that is available, because it's just too much trouble. Other appliances are similar. Playing music, you used to turn on the radio and maybe dial in a station. Or put a record on the turntable, or a cassette tape in the deck and press "Play". Appliances much the same. You had power and maybe one or two analog dial controls. Controls in your car were the same. Everything was tactile. Feedback was both physical and immediate. Nothing needed accounts or logins or apps to use.
- eeperson 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be. If your devices support HDMI-CEC[0], then you can turn on 1 device and everything sets itself up. For example, I can turn on my PS4 and it automatically turns on the TV and sets the correct input. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control
  - danfoxley 4y ago
    My Samsung TV "smart" feature overlays for 1+ minute when using HDMI-CEC.
- mmcnl 4y ago
  How about gaming? Nintendo 64 > power on > play Mario Kart within 10 seconds. The experience as a kid was truly magical, and in a sense it still is.
namaria 4y ago
One thing not taken into account on this rant (and it is just a big rant) is the incredible increase in scale. Nearly everyone has a phone and can make phone calls now and we're almost 8 billion people. The old, understandable, analog system would have never scaled like this. Quality didn't degrade because of greed or degeneracy. It was a trade-off and I say the level of access we have now trumps whatever nostalgia people feel for the past decades.
- ghostpepper 4y ago
  You may be correct that we made the right choice with the tradeoff, but saying that the old system worked better (for those who could use it) is not nostalgia. Audio quality (and communication ability) on zoom is objectively far worse than it was over analog copper lines.
  - namaria 4y ago
    Why are you comparing zoom calls to analog phone calls? My transcontinental, zero marginal cost whatsapp phone calls are pretty good.
    - ghostpepper 4y ago
      I haven't used that - how is the latency?
      - namaria 4y ago
        It's not great but it's good enough for, again, a free call half way across the globe.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    And then there was (european) ISDN. That was peak voice.
    - guenthert 4y ago
bombcar 4y ago
There is also something incredibly "simple" about the end result of an analog connection - literally a pair of wires connected across thousands of miles. Digitalization has added so many layers people don't even know - it's sad that there aren't many actual direct analog connections you can make anymore to see how "realtime" it was.
- bashinator 4y ago
  I love my electric guitar.
- disruptthelaw 4y ago
  I remember overseas calls having a huge lag. Now I can call across and works and chat with perfect audio and video. I think we’re romanticizing the past and failing to recognize the ways in which calls are so much better.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Nothing can avoid the speed-of-light lag, but full-duplex and things have made it certainly better. It's very noticeable on globe-spanning links (which is where video actually starts to help because you can use the silent visual cues).
- myself248 4y ago
  Yeah, the delay on digital phone calls still trips me up. It's nothing like being face-to-face or an analog call. I'll take the static, just give me sub-20ms latency!
fivre 4y ago
if you want to see how complex and overbuilt it is, https://www.youtube.com/c/ConnectionsMuseum https://www.youtube.com/c/ConnectionsMuseum has coverage of all the old PSTN equipment you could ever want i can't claim to _understand_ it half the time, but there are big rows of mechanical automatons galore

svachalek 4y ago

Absolutely. Same with turning on a TV these days. People used to flip a switch, now it's a highly technical process that takes a few minutes.

SoftTalker 4y ago
Yes, this is the point I wanted to raise. It's not just phones. The first minute of everything is torture now. It takes minutes to turn on the TV and navigate menus and establish connections to sources and get to the point where everything is buffered and playing smoothly. I watch a lot less TV than I did when I was younger, despite the vastly expanded amount of content that is available, because it's just too much trouble. Other appliances are similar. Playing music, you used to turn on the radio and maybe dial in a station. Or put a record on the turntable, or a cassette tape in the deck and press "Play". Appliances much the same. You had power and maybe one or two analog dial controls. Controls in your car were the same. Everything was tactile. Feedback was both physical and immediate. Nothing needed accounts or logins or apps to use.
eeperson 4y ago
It doesn't have to be. If your devices support HDMI-CEC[0], then you can turn on 1 device and everything sets itself up. For example, I can turn on my PS4 and it automatically turns on the TV and sets the correct input. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control
- danfoxley 4y ago
  My Samsung TV "smart" feature overlays for 1+ minute when using HDMI-CEC.
mmcnl 4y ago
How about gaming? Nintendo 64 > power on > play Mario Kart within 10 seconds. The experience as a kid was truly magical, and in a sense it still is.

namaria 4y ago

One thing not taken into account on this rant (and it is just a big rant) is the incredible increase in scale. Nearly everyone has a phone and can make phone calls now and we're almost 8 billion people. The old, understandable, analog system would have never scaled like this. Quality didn't degrade because of greed or degeneracy. It was a trade-off and I say the level of access we have now trumps whatever nostalgia people feel for the past decades.

ghostpepper 4y ago
You may be correct that we made the right choice with the tradeoff, but saying that the old system worked better (for those who could use it) is not nostalgia. Audio quality (and communication ability) on zoom is objectively far worse than it was over analog copper lines.
- namaria 4y ago
  Why are you comparing zoom calls to analog phone calls? My transcontinental, zero marginal cost whatsapp phone calls are pretty good.
  - ghostpepper 4y ago
    I haven't used that - how is the latency?
    - namaria 4y ago
      It's not great but it's good enough for, again, a free call half way across the globe.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  And then there was (european) ISDN. That was peak voice.
  - guenthert 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

There is also something incredibly "simple" about the end result of an analog connection - literally a pair of wires connected across thousands of miles. Digitalization has added so many layers people don't even know - it's sad that there aren't many actual direct analog connections you can make anymore to see how "realtime" it was.

bashinator 4y ago
I love my electric guitar.
disruptthelaw 4y ago
I remember overseas calls having a huge lag. Now I can call across and works and chat with perfect audio and video. I think we’re romanticizing the past and failing to recognize the ways in which calls are so much better.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Nothing can avoid the speed-of-light lag, but full-duplex and things have made it certainly better. It's very noticeable on globe-spanning links (which is where video actually starts to help because you can use the silent visual cues).
myself248 4y ago
Yeah, the delay on digital phone calls still trips me up. It's nothing like being face-to-face or an analog call. I'll take the static, just give me sub-20ms latency!

fivre 4y ago

if you want to see how complex and overbuilt it is, https://www.youtube.com/c/ConnectionsMuseum https://www.youtube.com/c/ConnectionsMuseum has coverage of all the old PSTN equipment you could ever want i can't claim to _understand_ it half the time, but there are big rows of mechanical automatons galore