I'll be in touch ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The astronauts on Artemis went around the back of the Moon last night and were out of touch with the Earth for a whole forty minutes. Can you imagine being 'out of touch' with anybody for that long anymore? It just wouldn't happen, would it? Not in a time when almost everybody on the planet has a mobile 'phone. By chance, I photographed this yellow marker in a field the other day (I'm not sure what it's actually marking, but never mind ..) and it reminded me of a time before mobiles, a time when different companies were battling to get a slice of that new, emergent market. In the 90s I used to do a bit of PR photography, you see, for a company called Rabbit, whose idea was a new portable telephone system that required you to be within range of one of their transmitters. (Didn't work out, for obvious reasons!) I'd get various famous* people to pose with a hand-set .. and a rabbit .. and the shots would be sent out to local press. Nowadays, of course, we're completely absorbed by 'phones. Mesmerized, hypnotised, totally contr .. oh sorry, my 'phone's ringing. Gotta go!

* It's Mike Harding, if you were struggling!

 

GR8 lol...

I heard a news report yesterday that said we now text each other more than we actually call each other. Hm! Did I hear it or was I texted it? Cripes! Anyway, I'd had mobile phones for years before I even went near that technology. I just couldn't see the point of spending ages trying to type a msg with my two clumsy thumbs when I could simply press speed-dial and talk to my friends!
Shows you what I know, eh? ..  ;-) !

Gave me another chance to dive into the archive, though, and look what I came up with. Rabbit! Remember Rabbit? Rabbit was the Big Thing in 1992! All you had to do was carry that brick of a phone around with you and then, when someone wanted to contact you, you were sent a bleeper msg which would prompt you to go and find a Rabbit transmitter point, marked by a turqouise Rabbit sign stuck onto a nearby building, so that you could then phone them back. What a brilliant idea, eh? Er, no! It last less than two years and loss the company millions! Still, it made me a few bob, as I got to do the PR photography all over the North-West. Here's our hairy friend Mike Harding - on the left - (Sorry Mike!) plugging the cutting edge gear in front of the Liver Buildings in Liverpool. Ain't technology GR8, lol....