It may have been decades ago, but there was a time when it did not seem awkward or even unusual to just...call someone's house, or to simply stop by.

There was usually a purpose in this that was more profound than just being bored or lonely or something, but none was really required.

And maybe the person they were trying to find wasn't home right now, but that was OK. It was not weird to talk to whoever for a minute, or to hang out for awhile.

Nowadays, the ubiquity of personal pocket supercomputers means that the closest most people ever get to that kind of generally-welcome (if unexpected) interaction is a text message.

"Hey, I'm in front of your house. Are you home?"

And maybe that works more efficiently between two individuals than knocking on the door did, but otherwise this present way of doing things mostly just serves to further increase our social isolation.

Sometimes it seems that the closer it is that our technology allows us to be, the further it is that we actually become.

My siblings are much older than I am and when I was 10 my sister was starting her relationship with now-husband. One time he called our house phone, I picked up, and said "yeah sister is home but she's busy at the moment so you can spend five minutes talking to me instead"

I set up an old rotary phone via twilio as a house phone for our kids. They just dial 1-9, each number is programmed to a different family member. Their cousins also have one, so they can call each other whenever they want. It’s great to also have a phone that just rings in the house, for when you don’t care about getting a specific person.

That's a facinating obsevation! I hadn't consider the side effects of calling a common phone and interacting with other people rather than exclusively the one person you wanted to talk/text with. Probably distances you from (or never allows you to know) those adjacent to the person you already know.

I can vouch that pass the phone around is still a thing in southern Europe, or being sundenly dropped into a group video call where everyone gathers around the phone to be in view.

I’m looking to set up an Asterisk server that takes calls over Bluetooth on any paired cell phones inside the house, or falls back to a VoIP line if no phones are at home.

Similarly, I find that it’s hard to catch family on their cell and much easier when I call their home.

does that not still happen for you?

passing cell phones around still happens for my family