Consider some misunderstandings of early U.S. telephone service providers at the start of the twentieth-century:
When the Independent [telephone] companies first began to come together in conventions to exchange experiences, one fact was always commented upon with great curiosity by the managers of town or city plants. This was that they invariably met with failure in their endeavors to induce farmers to put in what are known as “lockout” devices, by means of which every telephone on a party line becomes practically a private wire. In cities, the party line is considered a great nuisance, because there is no privacy in conversation. Naturally, the managers of plants figured that this objection prevailed in the country also; but, almost without exception, they found that one of the great attractions to the farmer was that his [and her] telephone did ring every time the other sixteen or twenty people on the line rang up, and that that he [and she] could hear or be overheard in conversation. It was a practical demonstration of the social hunger the farmer has endured for centuries, and which is now ended, thanks to the arrival of telephone competition.
Sociality trumps privacy for the lonely.
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Quotation source: Latzke, Paul. 1906. A fight with an octopus; being the story of a great contest that was won against tremendous odds, as printed originally in Success magazine [Feb. 1906] Chicago: The Telephony Pub. Co., p. 43-4.