CHANGES-2

Freedom is what they got and enjoyed.

This is the car, a Röhr (Roehr), made in Germany towards the end of the 1920s, and it's convertible too.

My mom loved that car. They lived in Switzerland then and she became the family's preferred driver.

Another form of communication that changed dramatically and rapidly is, of course, telephony.

The first successful experiment with telephone was conducted by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. And the following year the first city exchange was installed in Hartford, Connecticut. London became the first European city with a telephone exchange two years later. Cities were then gradually linked, nationally and internationally.

All in all it took several decades before telephones became really practical—no use to have a telephone rigged up in one's house and only a limited number of people to call. For those of you born with a mobile phone on the bedside table it must be incomprehensible that only 30 years ago the telephone exchanges in the areas outside of the main cities of Indonesia were all manual. One had to call the operator by cranking the little handle on the side of the phone and state who or what number one wanted to be connected with. Long-distance calls would typically involve a long wait for the connection to be brought off. And only 15 years ago it was very difficult, bordering on the impossible, to get a new telephone connection in Jakarta, there were simply not enough lines.

Something to ponder—does the cellular phone avalanche also mean greater freedom for their users? I'm not sure. Unless switching the phone off, one is on call 24/7. And observe groups of friends sitting in a café or restaurant, each one concentrating on a phone, chatting, mailing, smsing…

Maybe that is freedom to replace talking to the person opposite or next to you with chatting to ones far away—to let them know where you are and what a great time is had by all.

Comments welcome!