I think cell phones have changed rural life more than any other invention of my lifetime. As a boy growing up, not only were there no cell phones, we didn't even have private lines, we had party lines, 8 houses to a line, that later shrank to 4 until I was about 15 or 16 when technology allowed each household a private line. There was quite a bit of temptation to eavesdrop on others during the party line days, and more than once news got out that the parties involved did not want out, often only half of it was true. From time to time the phone company sent round letters about privacy and the like, they didn't do any good. One of the oddities I remember about the party line was trying to ring someone on your line. You had to dial the number, then hang up, of course it rang in your house too. You just guessed how long it might take the party you were calling to answer, then you picked up, maybe they were there, maybe they weren't. The other thing that would happen is someone would leave their phone off the hook. When that happened, after a fashion the phone company had an automatic zinging sound that got louder and louder, if you happened within 5 feet of the phone you might hear it. After about 30 minutes of that, the entire line went dead, until the phone was hung up and reset.
Today, everybody has a phone. Kids have phones, grannies, every school bus driver, policeman, everybody. In a small town today, news travels like lightning. Lots of times it isn't any more accurate than it was in the old days of the 8 party lines. I live in a river valley about a mile wide, with two low water bridges between our town and about 2/3 of the land I operate. After a big rain, such as we had today, the river goes over the bridges, blocking our access to the outside world unless we take a very out of the way trip, driving about 6 miles west and south then back east and then north, to go a half mile east. With the high water we get limbs and entire trees blocking the bridges, until the county comes to remove them, sometimes several days later. The four families living in our valley often resort to clearing the bridges themselves, as I am the youngest that frequently now falls to me. I was pushing several medium sized trees off of the bridge this evening when my cell rang, my neighbor on the other side of the river rather excitedly told me he needed my help right away as his truck and sprayer were about to turn over...at least, that is what I thought he said. I told him I was on the tractor and it would take a bit to get there, he said to hurry. Fearing the worst and knowing the 3 mile trip by tractor would take a while(many of our tractors max out about 20) I began frantically punching numbers into the cell phone trying to rally other neighbors to the scene, only to find out I was still going to beat everyone else there.
As I neared his farm, the reality of the situation became more clear. He had what we call a blaster hooked to his tractor, that is a sprayer with one big nozzle and a blower that you use to spray, it blasts the spray out in one direction about 50 feet, it mounts on the 3 point. It appeared he had not pinned one link on the 3 point, and when he turned the corner out of his driveway, the sprayer came unhitched partially, and the 75 gallon tank full of spray was about to go over backwards, the road was blocked, and he was struggling to move the 700 and some odd pound load back forward and down to rehitch the linkage by hand with his wife. I used my tractor and loader and we managed to get things back together without dumping the spray. Then, I had to get busy and call back the several guys who thought John was in his pickup and it was about to turn over to tell them, I was wrong.
In spite of that, cell phones save more people every day I think than anything else around. Fires get reported faster, as do heart attacks and accidents. With the cell phone and internet, rural folks in the middle of nowhere are just as connected as city folks, and I think that is progress.