There, I said it.
And before the comment section lights up like a slot machine in Reno, let me clarify: I don’t miss the billing. I don’t miss the hold music. I don’t miss arguing with a disembodied voice about long-distance charges that appeared like crop circles.
What I miss is competence.
There was a time—kids, gather round—when a service was a thing. A real thing. You paid for it, it worked, and if it didn’t, a human being with a truck and a clipboard showed up and fixed it. The rules were boring. The interfaces were ugly. The standards were ironclad. And somehow, miraculously, the damn thing worked.
Fast forward to the modern web.
We have infinite tools, infinite “free” plans, infinite standards committees, infinite vendors screaming about differentiation like carnival barkers hopped up on venture capital and cold brew.
And yet… nothing quite works without a ritual sacrifice.
Want to shorten a link?
Sure. But first: an account.
Then a plan.
Then an interstitial ad.
Then a pop-up asking if you’d like to upgrade your experience while your credibility quietly bleeds out on the sidewalk.
Want to host a webinar, send a document, manage identity, automate a workflow, analyze behavior, or just point a human being to a page without detouring through someone else’s monetization scheme?
Welcome to the maze.
Every “free tier” is a hostage negotiation.
Every dashboard is a casino.
Every roadmap is “subject to change.”
And the best part? We have standards coming out of our ears.
Open standards.
Industry standards.
De facto standards.
Emerging standards.
Frameworks to govern the use of frameworks that interpret the standards.
None of which prevent your audience from being slapped with an ad before they get to your content.
This is the dirty secret of modern web services:
We optimized for innovation and forgot about obligation.
Everyone is differentiating.
No one is responsible.
The old phone company didn’t ask you to “engage.”
It didn’t A/B test your dial tone.
It didn’t insert a sponsored message before connecting your call.
It had a monopoly, yes—but it also had something we’ve nearly extinguished: a duty to deliver a basic service, cleanly, predictably, and without drama.
Today, services aren’t designed to disappear into reliability. They’re designed to extract value at every step. Attention, data, upgrades, lock-in. The service is just the excuse.
We tell ourselves this is progress.
But when every interaction feels like a trap door, every tool like a funnel, and every “free” offering like a teaser trailer for disappointment, something fundamental has gone off the rails.
Maybe the problem isn’t a lack of innovation.
Maybe it’s a lack of restraint.
Maybe what we’re missing isn’t better UX, smarter AI, or another standards body with a 400-page PDF.
Maybe we’re missing the radical idea that a service should serve, quietly and reliably, without demanding tribute on the way through.
God help me—I miss the phone company.
Full Disclosure: This isn’t nostalgia from the cheap seats.
Four generations of my family worked for the phone company — including me.
We lived inside a system that valued continuity over cleverness and obligation over growth hacks.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it understood something we seem to have forgotten:
services exist to be relied upon, not admired.
At least when you picked it up, you got a dial tone.