Assignment 7: Predict the future!

I think that in 50 years, cordless telephones will have gone the way of the typewriter or the manual television set.

When they were developed, cordless phones were liberating. Before they were on the market, if you wanted to make a phone call, you not only had to be in one place, but you had to stay there. Remember stretching those spiral cords as far as they would go? Or how about running back and forth if you wanted to change phones – leaving the phone off the hook in one room, running to the other room and taking the phone off the receiver, then running back to the first room and hanging up? Cordless phones freed callers of their need to be tethered to the wall. You could roam your house free of such worries as, “How long will it take me to coil this cord back?” – as long as you didn’t wander so far that the receiver lost touch with the base!

Of course, the phones’ range is not their only wart. Their batteries are their lifelines, and if they are left off their hooks, they quickly drain and lose their capacity to hold a charge. Anyone who has kids will tell you that there is nothing more frustrating than picking up a phone (when you finally find it, abandoned wherever your kids left it), trying to turn it on, and finding the battery dead. You might as well not have a phone at all.

And then there is the issue of beginning a call at home, chatting for a while, then having to leave. You have to cut the call short, either to call the person back later or from your cell phone. The cell phone is truly the liberating voice communication technology that cordless phones once purported to be.

In 50 years, it is highly likely not only that cordless phones will disappear, but also that land lines themselves – telephone wires into people’s homes – will become unnecessary. The internet is already providing voice communication services that replace the telephone. They offer flat-rate fees without all the add-ons that phone companies browbeat customers with. Skype even allows you to see who you’re talking to. Once people get comfortable with the internet as their conduit to the outside world for emergency purposes – 911 and alarm services – there will be no need to pay extra for landlines, and therefore no need for cordless phones.