there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

they never had widespread non-internet-based telephony

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

telephones in the pokémon world are an extension of the LAN/WAN/Internet systems that they developed for pokémon transfers and PC access there was no predecessor system afaict

they just sent Mail by carrier pidgey

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@Lady Hold on, this doesn't add up. The telephone communication devices in pokemon games are universally SEPARATE from the pokemon/item transfer/storage devices.

Telephony was built off of the /GPS/ system, not the computer/internet/cloud-storage system.

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@gaditb in the early games yes but they weren't called phones

the first device called a phone is the Rotom Phone, and those games do have remote box access

i’m drawing significantly off of the anime here though, where the videotelephony systems used in pokémon centers are i think pretty clearly on the same network as the transfer system

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@gaditb (but yes you might say there were two separate telephony networks, neither of which are pre-computing or necessarily look much like ours, which converged sometime in the 2010s)

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@Lady Ooh, I don't know the anime. That does sound reasonable, based on that.

(Possibly video calls, based in pokecenters, were built on the transfer network, while non-location-based audio was a newer invention and had to be built ad-hoc, slowly increasing in data capacity from minimal?)

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there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@gaditb yes i think this is entirely reasonable and this is why i want to read pokémon world RFCs

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@Lady "Hey just asking for an update on the status of the new error-correction algorithms RFC? It looks almost done, and last I heard a month ago was just waiting on finishing touches, but--?"
"Oh no, yeah, Bill transformed himself into a Pokemon again. He's better now; it'll be done within the week."
"OH MY GOD BILL HOW MANY TIMES IS THIS."

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@gaditb (out of universe the reason the anime has videotelephony in the 90s is because it looks better for ash to be talking to oak on a screen than just speaking into a telephone)

(image of what those devices looked like in DP although they've been around since the beginning: <archives.bulbagarden.net/wiki/>)

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@Lady @gaditb clearly evidence of a population that puts a high value on signed languages

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@Satsuma @Lady Pretty dangerous for such a society to have an "if we make eye contact, we fight" cultural norm, then.

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@gaditb @Lady the if we make eye contact we fight cultural norm might have derived from the meaning of eye contact in local signed languages!

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@Satsuma @gaditb it wouldn't surprise me if pokémon trainers used a sign language to communicate as screaming into the forest is not great for catching pokémon

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@Satsuma @gaditb also pokémon can communicate back using it

there are a lot of differences between the pokémon world and the real world but i think one of the funniest is that 

@Satsuma @gaditb like the emphasis on videotelephony might just be "if i can't see my pikachu i have no fucking clue what pika pika is supposed to mean"

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