eople feel that they exist in a kind of paralegal limbo today.
They don't understand what's demanded of them. If it's "service," why
aren't they treated like a public service? And if it's money, then why
aren't they free to compete for it? No one seems to know, really.
Those who claim to know keep changing their minds. Nobody in
authority seems willing to grasp the nettle for once and all.

Telephone people from other countries are amazed by the American
telephone system today. Not that it works so well; for nowadays even
the French telephone system works, more or less. They are amazed that
the American telephone system STILL works AT ALL, under these strange
conditions.

Bell's "One System" of long-distance service is now only about eighty
percent of a system, with the remainder held by Sprint, MCI, and the
midget long-distance companies. Ugly wars over dubious corporate
practices such as "slamming" (an underhanded method of snitching
clients from rivals) break out with some regularity in the realm of
long-distance service. The battle to break Bell's long-distance
monopoly was long and ugly, and since the breakup the battlefield has
not become much prettier. AT&T's famous shame-and-blame
advertisements, which emphasized the shoddy work and purported ethical
shadiness of their competitors, were much remarked on for their studied
psychological cruelty.

There is much bad blood in this industry, and much long-treasured
resentment. AT&T's post-breakup corporate logo, a striped sphere, is
known in the industry as the "Death Star" (a reference from the movie
Star Wars, in which the "Death Star" was the spherical high-tech
fortress of the harsh-breathing imperial ultra-baddie, Darth Vader.)
Even AT&T employees are less than thrilled by the Death Star. A
popular (though banned) T-shirt among AT&T employees bears the
old-fashioned Bell logo of the Bell System, plus the newfangled striped
sphere, with the before-and-after comments: "This is your brain--This
is your brain on drugs!" AT&T made a very well-financed and determined
effort to break into the personal computer market; it was disastrous,
and telco computer experts are derisively known by their competitors as
"the pole-climbers." AT&T and the Baby Bell arbocks still seem to have
few friends.

Under conditions of sharp commercial competition, a crash like that of
January 15, 1990 was a major embarrassment to AT&T. It was a direct
blow against their m