Ghost Phones by #Stephen Mallon

This beautiful image to the left by #Stephen Mallon, may be unrecognizable to the very younger generations, yet triggers a sense of nostalgia to the rest of us.  The slang 'To Dime someone out' was a term used in reference to telling on someone of a deed (usually negative) they had done.  It references using a dime in a pay phone to call the cops or someone else (fill in the blank).  Well as years went by that 'dime' quickly became 2 dimes then 25 cents and possibly 50¢ in some areas. During the black out in NYC 2003, after walking home from being stuck inside the F train, I found that out landline (not digitial) worked just fine. I was able to call my out of state Mother and let her know I made it home.  Post Storm Sandy (another partial blackout), I was able to go to a payphone, drop 50¢ and make phone calls to get the things done I needed to that day. The neighborhood where I made these calls, not even the traffic lights were functioning. Though the progress of technology is rather great, at some point, where is the back up? If we rely ONLY on cell phones, digital land lines, electronic windows in cars without a manual option, where does that leave us?
What is our back up plan?  I supposed we shouldn't look backwards in time for answers, but perhaps forwards where we can run on more solar and wind, to be a more reliable power source so when the big storms hit or a transformer blows for some reason we can still go about our day.