As I sit here working, the telephone rang 14 times in the last two hours. Of those 14 times, two people spoke and I answered, the other 12 were left to the answering machine.

I don’t answer the telephone, anymore. The sheer arrogance of the device is beginning to really offend me. Why do you think you have the right to interrupt the flow of my work, the flow of ideas? Simply because you have a telephone? You think that gives you the right to break into my train of thought?

No, it doesn’t. Nor does the fact I possess one give me the right to interrupt you. I used to be frustrated with getting answering machines, now I see them for what they are: the beginnings of the real digital assistants Algys Budrys wrote about. The next step, of course, is to get one which only lets people with a certain key sequence through, and takes a message from everyone else. Then will come callerID based units that let you allow certain people through but not others.

I’ve already embraced the arrival of this particular piece of technology. I’ve already broken the conditioning we’ve all been subjected to since birth. I no longer jump when the phone rings. It still interrupts me slightly, as I have to pause to see if I recognize the voice on the phone, but when it turns out to be another Dish Network phony friend call, I can just go back to what I was doing, only having lost a couple of seconds.

I’m not hard to talk to; after all, I spoke to the only two voices that cared enough to speak first. It’s my day, my work zone. Is it really that much for me to claim you need to give me a reason before I let you interrupt me?
It rang three more times while I was writing this. One was legitimate, the others didn’t care enough to speak. Did I lose out by not dropping everything to deal with the other two? Doesn’t feel like a loss. It feels like freedom.