The Telephone - Brooklyn's New Technology

Lest we celebrate the telephone too much today, let’s remember that the telephone was greeted in some quarters with just as much grumbling and dismay as each new technology has been since - for example, answering machines and cell phones - with the same simultaneous bemoaning of how the new technology threatens quality of life, along with complains about the glacial pace of the telephone company's response to service requests. "We are the martyrs of the most abominable telephone slavery in the world... ever after, his spare time goes to the winds, his temper follows suit, and his life becomes a burden to himself and his friends." Do the words of this 1902 Brooklynite, in a Brooklyn Eagle letter to the editor, sound familiar?