Telephone companies complained about frivolous use of telephones and told their users to be businesslike. Their machines were, after all, important. Not until the 1920s did the phone companies catch on to what people really wanted from this wonderful new machine. They wanted to be drawn into a kind of living tether with one another. Today, even in business, that's how we use telephones.
Telephones unite our scattered families and keep friendships alive.
Oddly enough, Alexander Graham Bell himself predicted the social use of the telephone, but early makers and users didn't catch on. It bothered me that my father never did learn to relax and chat with me on a long-distance phone call. It took the next generation to see that the inherent use of the telephone was social. Our machines teach us. But they take their time evolving a role in our lives.