Princess Trimlines & PG&E
A few years back, I wrote about my beloved Princess Trimline, a phone that is terribly retro and still graces our home. It’s so well designed. And this past week, when we were without power due to PG&E’s horrible performance, guess what? It worked!
It’s been an awful few weeks for the disgraced utility. It botched communication during the first blackout, announcing it while management was partying at a three-star Michelin in Napa Valley. They next cut power to millions of customers across many counties, only to forget to turn off a 230,000-volt transmission line that — guess what — started a major fire! It turned off 30,000 miles of lines that couldn’t be turned back on until — guess what — they were inspected by humans in helicopters and on the ground. They told us it could take five days to manually inspect the lines and to prepare for a longer outage.
Then they failed to realize (or if they did, didn’t care) that cell phone towers would be without power, and with so many people having only cell phones these days — guess what — they couldn’t get updates from PG&E. Couldn’t get in touch with friends and family. Couldn’t make a call in an emergency and couldn’t tell if more fires were coming because they couldn’t receive notifications. PG&E spokespeople had the audacity to say “use a landline.” Out of touch or what?
Some of us are old school. We’re not on Facebook and never have been. We still take notes on paper. We still write letters and use wonderful pens from Italy. And we have Trimline phones. Ours worked, thank gosh. We were two days without power, and it wasn’t the end of the world. We could call our family. We lit our gas stove by hand but managed to cook. We figured out how to keep coolers filled with ice so our food didn’t spoil. We figured out that water warmed on the stove could suffice for a sponge bath, or washing our hair with cold water wasn’t the end of the world at all. We had fires in the fireplace and our homes were standing.
But it’s time to put technology to better use. I wondered why PG&E wasn’t using drones to inspect lines but then read this week that the Interior Department grounded its fleet of them because of security risks with China. Can’t we make our own drones?
It wasn’t a good week for PG&E, and for technology, really. Facebook continues with its political ads unrepentant and caring less about Twitter’s strong stance. Boeing still can’t get its act together with the MAX. Studies showed US students continue to decline in test scores in nearly all categories. So, I say, so much for EdTech and the gazillions of venture capital dollars trying to make things better. Apple’s figuring out its place in the streaming TV service world. And despite billions poured into a new tech-laden stadium, my beloved Warriors face catastrophic injury after injury, becoming an unrecognizable shadow of themselves.
Alas, when we get enamored with the next big thing, we have to remember that sometimes no tech or low tech gets the job done. Guess what? The Princess Trimline still works!