I had an interaction a while back that made me start thinking about payphones, and since you can call toll-free numbers from payphones here without depositing any coins (checked to make sure this is still a thing last week), this seemed like an interesting idea.
I have some artsy-fartsy thoughts about it, too: creative uses of dying infrastructure; ‘true’ anonymity - the info I’m getting from people is basically the number they’re calling from, as a product of that their location during the call, and whatever audio they want to shove down the pipe - that’s it; ideas about locality and physicality in an age where mass communication has erased borders in many senses, but people feel disconnected from their local communities more than ever, etc.
If you have some time to kill, I wrote a long-winded comment about it earlier and put it on a pastebin clone here (due to length limitations for comments here): https://pastes.io/paoqsezsjn
Basically, I like the idea of this weird number you can only reach from payphones someone slapped a sticker on in 2024, that doesn’t ask for money (even the .50 to connect), doesn’t try to sell you anything, and primarily just offers a box to leave some audio in. Could yield nothing, could yield something neat.
Probably just poor writing.
I had an interaction a while back that made me start thinking about payphones, and since you can call toll-free numbers from payphones here without depositing any coins (checked to make sure this is still a thing last week), this seemed like an interesting idea.
I have some artsy-fartsy thoughts about it, too: creative uses of dying infrastructure; ‘true’ anonymity - the info I’m getting from people is basically the number they’re calling from, as a product of that their location during the call, and whatever audio they want to shove down the pipe - that’s it; ideas about locality and physicality in an age where mass communication has erased borders in many senses, but people feel disconnected from their local communities more than ever, etc.
If you have some time to kill, I wrote a long-winded comment about it earlier and put it on a pastebin clone here (due to length limitations for comments here): https://pastes.io/paoqsezsjn
Basically, I like the idea of this weird number you can only reach from payphones someone slapped a sticker on in 2024, that doesn’t ask for money (even the .50 to connect), doesn’t try to sell you anything, and primarily just offers a box to leave some audio in. Could yield nothing, could yield something neat.
Hah I like it! Saving your link to read later! Thanks for sharing