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Comment by chrisweekly | Hacker News Reader

Stepping back a bit, I find it kind of strange that knowledge of a 7-digit number is all that's required for anyone in the world to (by default) immediately interrupt someone.

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Here's a thought. If the concept of a phone was never invented, and nobody knew what one was, and then suddenly here in 2024, an app company invented an app where:

- The user could type in a N digit number and hit a button...

- This would cause another user's device to instantly stop doing what it was doing. ring and buzz with a modal popup window...

- With no authentication whatsoever or often even no identification...

- And then if that other user pushed a button, it allowed the initial user to be able to instantly start sending them voice

This thing would never make it past any app store's guidelines, and would likely be unacceptable to users. It's intrusive, invasive, and practically invites abuse and spam. Yet, since The Phone is an actual historic invention that goes back decades, it's culturally acceptable for I guess legacy reasons.

Calling used to be expensive.

In the prehistoric era (and continuing into the present day), all that's required to interrupt someone is a set of vocal chords you can use to talk to them, or a finger you can use to tap them on the shoulder, or a fist you can use to knock on their door. The universe isn't naturally shaped in a way that makes interrupting difficult, and never has been.

Technology reducing distance kinda changes the game though.

I'm pretty sure that if the phone system didn't exist, no one from a call center in South Asia would have ever come all the way to rural Canada to try to tell me I have a computer virus that they can fix for a few hundred dollars.

Maybe not exactly that, but traveling salesmen (snake oil, encyclopedias) used to be more of a thing.

You also have to by physically near them.

> The universe isn't naturally shaped in a way that makes interrupting difficult, and never has been.

Yes it is... physical space is shaped to keep most people from being able to interrupt you. Being able to call anyone around the world changed that.

What common physical space keeps people from interrupting you?

- I had my own room as a kid. My parents and brother banged on the door whenever they pleased.

- I worked at a tech company, had my own desk, and wore headphones. Coworkers still sent me Slack messages and tapped me on my shoulder.

- I've lived in a home in the burbs. People came to my home and rang the bell.

None of them were hard for the interruptor to do, and all of them happened frequently. In fact, I would argue that they are more frequent than the number of phone calls I get nowadays, which are actually easy much easier to screen/ignore than any of the above interruptions.

I think their point is in physical space, dozens to maybe thousands of people (if there's a lot of people around you, I guess?) can easily interrupt you at any given moment. With phones and things like Slack, hypothetically anyone near a phone can interrupt you if you're near your phone. Which people usually keep near them.

I would say depending on how bad someone has it they could get 1 to 3 spam calls a day, I assume if someone was getting consistently more than that they'd use a screener to lower it. That's a significant amount.

In all of the places named above, people have interrupted me more than once a day, and I don't think that's abnormal. And again, it's much easier and less rude to put my phone on silent for unknown numbers, than it is to ignore a coworker/friend/neighbor/partner/child who's trying to get my attention, or even a stranger at my door.

I'm not here defending spam calls. They are annoying AF.

Nor do I disagree that hypothetically more people on Earth have access to us than ever before. Of course they do.

Nor do I find being interrupted pleasant. I personally find it very annoying, even when it's a loved one.

I'm just making the point that this idea of world where people weren't easy to interrupt never existed.

All of the same people who could interrupt you before still can, in all the same ways. In addition, people can call you and interrupt you that way, too.

I am not saying people couldn’t interrupt before, there are simply more ways for more people to interrupt you than ever before.

On the contrary, due to devices like phones and the internet, I have a smaller number of interruptive people in my immediate vicinity than I probably would have decades or centuries ago. Friends and loved ones feel more comfortable moving away, it's become more of a norm, bc it's easier than ever to keep in touch over long distances, and so they don't knock on my door, because they don't even live in my city. And on the flip side, I find myself surrounded by lots of strangers who don't know me, and so don't knock on my door or stop me on the street either.

I'm trying to change this, however, and make a lot more local friends. Despite the higher potential for being interrupted.

That's a local phone number in the US. It's 10 digits nationally. More internationally.

so I always thought that but weirdly a bunch of countries are just on the US exchange system. It's still billed as an international call but for example Bermuda is just 441. The American in me chuckles a bit at the idea of the UK's monarchs needing to dial 1 first to call their own territory

Why does 011 not apply?

011 is north america's international calling prefix.

1 is north america's calling code.

I can guarantee you that a UK monarch has never dialed a telephone on their own.

Though according to The Crown, they are constantly jabbering on the phone. After some designated member of staff dials it with a dialing glove, no doubt.

or driven one of those horseless carriages either I assume

Interesting point. 7 digits was in part chosen because people used to have to remember phone numbers.

So.. add a few digits and suddenly spammers would have trouble.

On the hand, add a few digits to phone numbers and Y2K might look like a walk in the park.

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