Although telephones were instated into the home as a business communication tool, the women of the house soon appropriated the technology for “sociability” - checking in with family and friends, gossiping, chatting and connecting with the community. Ana and Camila aptly chit-chat about how this phenomenon became so pronounced over the years that it shaped the evolution of phones and outlined the ways in which we use phones now.
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Main research and audio editing was done by Ana. Music by Nelson Guay (SoundCloud: fluxlinkages)
OFtC is a sister project of the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
References:
Fisher, C. S. 1992. America calling: A social history of the telephone to 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hanson, E. 1995. The telephone and its queerness. In Cruising the performative: Interventions into the representation of ethnicity, na tionality, and sexuality, edited by E. A. Case. Bloomington: Indi ana University Press.
Moyal, A. 1992. The gendered use of the telephone: An Australian case study. Media, Culture, and Socieh J 14:51-72.
O'Keefe, G., and Sulanowski, B.1995. More than just talk: Uses, gratifications, and the telephone. Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly 72(4):922-933.
Rakow, L. 1992. Gender on the line: Women, the telephone, and community life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Arafeh, S. 2000. Chapter Five: Women, Telephones, and Subtle Solidarity: A Counternarrative. Counterpoints Journal. Peter Lang AG. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42976096?read-now=1&seq=26#page_scan_tab_contents
Retrowow. 80s mobile phones. https://www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_collectibles/80s/mobile_phone.html#:~:text=The 8500X had an alphabetic,than the 8000X and 8000S.
Sallyedelstein. 2015. The Telephone and the Housewife. Envisioning The American Dream https://envisioningtheamericandream.com/2015/12/22/the-telephone-and-the-housewife/