Remember the bad old days

The amazingly prolific Regine points to this gallery of retro telecom ads. It's interesting to see how little some of the industry rhetoric has changed over the past 60 years. It's also interesting to see the notion of the "option value of contacts" being embedded in the service so explicitly at this early date, a notion we are still trying to quantify today. Some of the photos prompt laughter, as it seems almost absurd now to imagine a time when people were mostly "out of touch," but it wasn't that long ago. Our children will look back with pitying wonder at some of our notions of progress.