Is There a Local Culture to Long Distance Calling?

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Most subscribers paid a flat monthly rate for unlimited calling within a local calling area. Local calling area was defined differently, and it didn't follow standard political boundaries. For a long time, if you were placing a long distance call out of your area, you would have to talk to a human operator to place the call. Even when long distance dyling was automated, many people still in the habit of calling the operator to find out how much it was going to cost before they placed the call.

Paris Marx is joined by Kevin Driscoll to discuss the networks and services built by volunteers and hobbyists on top of the telephone network before the internet took over the in the 1990s, and what it can teach us about the internet and social media today.

Kevin Driscoll is the author of The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media and an associate professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Follow Kevin on Twitter at @kevindriscoll.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

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