Back in the days of prmitive man and ancient ways, as far back even as the 1970,'s or 80's when civilization was not so SMART one might see these strange devices in offices upon the desks of executives. This sharp pointed pokey metal device was welded to a round heavy base to hold it in place on a desk. It was not a form of weaponry but a receptical for data processing.
Before the advanced age of artificial brains and the evolved sophisticated mind mimicking processes of tech talking, most human populations still used pen and paper as a form of transfering information.
A thing called a message pad was very common. It worked in a rather simplistic way of sending and receiving. Telephones were used in these times but were not so SMART as to send videos or emoji images. Back then one person just spoke to another person through a wired telephone. If no one was around to answer the phone it would just ring and ring until the caller hung up. If two people were talking on the phone and someone else tried to call either person's phone number the call would not go through, instead a busy signal was heard, bzzz bzzz bzzz bzzz, and you would have to keep calling back.
In offices there were people hired to be a secretary or receptionist. This person had the job of answering the phone and greeting people that came in. Little pads of paper were kept at the secretary's desk to take messages for the other people in the office who were not available. The paper message would then get placed on the desk of the person who it was for, or put in a message cubby, little labled box spaces for people in the office.
The little spikey device was used to keep the messages for a while just in case it was necessary to find the name or phone number again. Eventually someone would go through the spikey holder and delete old messages to the trash.
In time this system faded out because a new fangled device called an answering machine was invented. It was a tape recorder that answered the telephone, played a message to the caller, and then recorded a message from the caller. This was the beginning of the era of people not actually talking to each other as much, they could just use the message machine to communicate.
Now or our modern society simply talks to their phones to get updated on the latest messages, media platform or intelligence- true false or trending.
Pen and paper do still exist but typewriters, answering machines, answering services, wired telephones, phone booths, telephone operators, telegraph machines, fax machines, desk calculators, etc, are all found in vintage memorabilia.
What will go extinct in the next decade?
TIME TRAVELLER STORIES OLD SCHOOL
