Is it just me or is there still a more intimate feel to a call conducted on a landline. I know that when I'm travelling I never feel quite like I'm really connecting to my loved ones, because not only am I miles away and often in another timezone, but because there is no physical connection to them.
All the traditional words we use around telephony are to do with tangible connections: the line, connection, to get through to some one etc. And the iconography is even more powerful: you can't strangle someone with the reception from a mobile phone. The tense moment in whodunnits and thrillers where someone has to wait for a call next to the phone because the cord is not only the connection but also the limiting factor; it stops you taking the phone away with you.
I know that the mobile phone has given us lots of other things. But that sense of intimacy and immediacy and sometimes threat which comes from being physically connected by the phone cord is being lost.
