I had to smile when I read your question, and I nearly laughed out loud at the idea of your attempt to get your pets interested in the telephone.
Willow gets “interested” in my phone to the extent that she wants to speak – and does speak – any time I’m on a voice call for more than a minute or so. (That’s a rare occurrence, so it’s something that she seems to notice.) Whether I’m listening or speaking, when that call has a couple of back-and-forth speaking parts, then she’s on her feet and in my grill… and “talking”.
When she hears animal sounds on television, she cocks her head in the way that dogs often do to triangulate sound better, and she pays close attention to (some of) the images there, especially if they’re screen-size shots of animals that she might recognize. We watched a show on wolves several weeks ago, and you’d have thought it was her own family on screen, she was so intensely interested in all of the sounds and many of the close-up images. Sounds from sea animals (on television) sometimes interest her, but those images not at all.
The one piece of technology that I have tried to introduce her to is… my doorbell. I’ve tried to show her what makes the sound (the chime hanging on my living room wall), and how it is produced (by showing her me pressing the button to make the sound), but all to no avail. That sound is her accursed and sworn enemy, and she will never forgive, never forget (that sound) and never accept it, wherever it occurs or wherever she is.
Thanks for a fun question.