HPR 412 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Telephone Tapping, Anxiety, Alarm Clock
Document Summary
Home and family as a communications network: boundaries of domestic. Intimate family secrets might be put on public display via these new instruments. What could be done about the effects of new forms of publicity on family intimacy? (p. 68) Harper"s 1893 public amusements increase in splendor and frequency, but private joys grow rare and difficult. Nyt discussed how it was atrocious, and how an experiment led to private discussions being overheard. In one case, a man discovered how his wife was having an affair. Whenever he would call his residential telephone, it was already engaged. The suspicious husband tapped the phone and discovered conversations between his wife and her lover. The evidence was accepted as grounds for divorce. Ct legislature passed a law against wiretapping. Some argued divorce would decline due to cooking advancements. New communication technologies allowed for courting/infidelity and romancing unacceptable persons outside of their class, their race, etc.
