I reflected on the telephone’s promise of connection, recalling that Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call in 1876 and spoke to his assistant Thomas Watson.
I described how the telephone let people hear one another without sharing a room, and how it was imagined to eliminate distance, waiting, and the longing of communication.
I contrasted that early aspiration with the present: we carry thousands of people in our pockets, yet we still feel distant, leaving me to ask, “So, what went wrong?”