A grey phone.

‘Dad, what’s that?’ my son says as he reaches across my work desk to grab the desk phone. I look at him somewhat confused and ask him what he means. ‘What’s that black thing on your desk’. Suddenly I feel old, very old. ‘It’s a phone, like my iPhone but a landline and without any other apps’. I suddenly realise that I’m about to have to explain what a landline is. I sink into my chair and find myself filled with a bit of disbelief as to how quickly things have changed. But I was also filled with nostalgia.

We used to have one phone when I grew up. It was grey and had a rotary dial. It was in our living room. In a corner, next to a comfortable chair. Anyone could answer the phone, simply by lifting it and stating our family name. As I think back upon it, it was a remnant from the past in a time where the pace of change was about to explode.

‘So you’ve never actually used a ‘normal’ phone?’. Nope, he hadn’t. Never. Probably seen them but never thought about what they actually were. ‘Can you play games on it?’, he asked.

Suddenly my thoughts go to my grandparents. Like anyone faced with change and increasingly speedy change, they looked back upon what used to be and said it was simpler. Simpler but better. Less complicated.

I see the tools that allow my children to be creative, build digital worlds, shoot and edit videos, sing songs and do silly dances and film it and laugh. Always using screens to do this. And I feel myself wonder if it’s better, worse or simply different from what used to be.

And funnily enough, the only clear thought that fills my mind is that we humans are tribal. Not screen time versus playing with lego versus drawing. It’s about us as humans. What sits underneath all of it. That grey phone was, in a basic way, our tribes’ connection to the outside world. We answered as one. And everyone could hear what was said.

It was a phone. A grey one. With a rotary dial. And it was our little tribes' calling horn.