25th
no obsolescence
Sometimes writers worry that invoking any kind of technology in their work is like inserting a ticking time bomb of obsolescence. Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) opens with the adulterous bond trader Sherman McCoy accidentally dialing his wife from a pay phone when he meant to dial his mistress. Having given himself away, he hangs up in a panic.
Sherman stood by the telephone, breathing rapidly, almost panting. What was he to do now? He felt so defeated…
He dug out another quarter and summoned up Maria’s number into his brain. He concentrated on it. He nailed it down. Then he dialed with a plodding deliberation, as if he were using this particular invention, the telephone, for the first time.
Ha ha, Tom Wolfe you retrograde sucker! Your book is barely twenty years old and most kids these days don’t even know what a pay phone is!
And yet it’s interesting… what he describes, misdialing from a pay phone, it’s actually a little hard to believe. Seven digits, dialed separately, is a lot of digits—about halfway through you’d probably sense that something was wrong. You’d sense you’d made a mistake and retrieve your quarter and start again. Whereas with a text message—that’s just one button. And no stopping it.
The technology is almost gone but the technology that’s replaced it has actually *increased the danger*. Amazing. Wolfe wins again.
