Take me back

I've just received a twitter message from a good friend who's currently very excited about having a new mobile phone service provider (Michelle, read her blog here http://www.michellemcaleer.com/blog/). What's so exciting about this new provider? Nothing. Today service is no longer about being the best; it's about convincing the public that you're not the worst. Our standards of consumerism have severely dropped.

Messages of support followed my friend's twitt, all allies against Telstra (yes I've named you, if you don't like, lift your game).

My husband and I have a significant difference in our opinions of the use of time-travel (this may one day come between us, should technology catch up); he would not blink before jumping into the future, whereas I am nostalgic for a 1950's past. A time that those superior black & white movies convince me was a time of integrity. A time when families valued talking, couples worked out (or ignored) their problems and a time when marketing was focused on the personal touch.

I'm sure my Nanna would have complained about all the door to door salesmen that turned up to show off the new Hoover, Encyclopedias or pots and pans. The difference was that these people really were just a phone call away if something went wrong. Try finding the guy now who signed you up for your Internet service when your connection keeps cutting out.

Why were they more accessible, my theory (based on absolutely nothing but my own rants) is that they had products that you could stand by. Look at the cars of the 1950's, the work that went into creating each one, the materials and design. If you bought a telephone back then, you would have it ten years later - can you imagine owning the one mobile phone for more than 18mths?

Today when we buy products we do it with suspicion, deciphering the lies from the marketer, but back then was a time of trust. We could bring it back, it's up to those service providers and manufacturers, just stop giving us crap products.

Of course I realise that post-modernists will explain that even the 50's wasn't like "the 50's", but it will always be there in my time-travel fantasies.