This is an image of a telecommunication cable that runs through my neighborhood…actually one of two still dangling from the power poles behind our homes. This cable was likely run in the late 1970s..my guess as most of the houses in my neighborhood were built around this time. When these cables were run, they represented the latest, greatest communication technology at the time. You see, everyone wanted a phone in their homes and to provide that service, cables like this were a central part of the infrastructure. Each phone line into a home required two of these copper wires for connection to the outside.
These copper wires and the underlying technology did evolve a bit over time, transmitting more than phone calls to include television signals and the Internet. But over the last few decades, the landlines fueled by these copper wires have faded into the past, replaced by personal wireless telecommunications devices that we all now carry in our pockets. In the modern world, these copper wires are relics of a time gone by yet one singular house is seemingly clinging to the decades old, now somewhat ritualistic form of communication.
Where else in the modern, current, real world do we see such a steadfast and tenacious grip upon the rituals of the past? Ah yes, education. Newspapers have moved online. Phone Booths on every corner are gone. Cabs have by and large given way to app based on demand transportation. Most movies and “television” shows are consumed on a computer or tablet screen. Cash has largely been displaced by electronic forms of payment. Even higher education institutions are feeling the effects of being displaced to a certain degree by YouTube, yes most Youtubers are in-fact, educators.
Yet the ritual (dictionary.com 8. any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner) of education, just like the sole household clinging to their landline in this image, remains unburdened by the modern world around it. It is irrelevant, unengaging, unmotivating and ineffective…and so is your landline…it’s beyond time for a change.
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