Felix the Cat and the Mimeograph Machine

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I do have a fuzzy recollection of those days when, as a young man, I would fall into bed, exhausted from the day, and find myself instantly asleep. Clearer are the memories of days of seeming unremitting stress as I struggled to pull my life into some semblance of, first, harmony, and then later, health.  Those days presaged whirligig nights of blanket fights that raged from dusk ‘til dawn. I awoke as exhausted as before the bout.  Thankfully, it has become better in these calmer years. Better, yes, but sometimes really weird.

I no longer retire with much expectation of sleep.  If it comes it comes, I can take it or leave it.  Night is, far more predictably, a time for meditation and the freedom to engage in conversation with someone who completely shares my interests and perspective.  I refer, naturally, with no slight intended to my dear wife, to myself.

It grows increasingly clear as I bumble through my 60s that enlightenment is a personal journey.  The only commonality we share with others on the trip is the ever-receding horizon.  As a result, the person closest to our heart is not the one who chatters along about plans for tomorrow or next week.  It is instead the one most tolerant of our inclination to stare dreamily into space, going where "no man has gone before," and where we all must travel alone.  I refer, of course, to our morning mirror buddy, ourselves.  If we happen to live with someone who not only tolerates us, but genuinely cares for us - that is truly wonderful. 

All of which is, of course, unnecessary prologue to the strange perceptual experience I had the other night.  I say "perceptual experience" because the line between a waking meditative reverie and a sleeping dream has become thin enough to ignore.  The “experience” had to do with Felix the Cat and a mimeograph machine.  In a scene reminiscent of Fantasia, an endless stream of Felix the Cat models spewed out of a mimeograph machine and marched downstairs, in search no doubt of the excellent scallop and garlic pasta dish Christine had made for dinner. I would awake, toss and turn, go back to sleep and Felix would march on.  The connection between Felix and the mimeograph may not be immediately obvious, but it does make sense.

Those who do not study the media may be unaware that Felix the Cat was the very first TV star.  In 1928 the experimental TV station in New York W2XBS needed a moving image to calibrate their primitive cameras. They put a 13-inch tall papier-mâché model of Felix, a current print and film star, on a record turntable and spun him around.  And there he sat for 2 hours a day for almost a decade, transfixing the handful of employees and engineers who could receive the gradually improving image on a fuzzy, black and white two-inch screen.

During that same era the stencil printing, or mimeograph, machine was gaining some popularity in business offices around the country.  My memories of that particular piece of technology spring from my first teaching jobs in the early 1970s.  I recall being particularly entranced with the first electric mimeograph machines where the hand crank was replaced by an electric motor that allowed the copies to spill from the machine at seemingly blinding speed.

The implications for the Internet may not be immediately obvious – still they are there.  You see, the most amazing thing about Felix spinning around in front of the primordial TV camera and the pages marching out of the mimeograph machine, like brooms under Mickey's spell, was the technology that produced them.  Felix transfixed us because of how he got to that tiny little screen - pictures through the air - awesome.  Same for the mimeograph machine.  Dozens of copies at the flip of a switch - hundreds if you wanted them.  OK, so you couldn't read the last few dozen, but look how many there are!!

We are currently entranced with the incredibly cool ways that the Internet gets stuff before our i-s. That's not a typo, I mean our iPhones, our iPads, our iPods and all the other iLike things that we stuff into our pockets.  Mr. Jobs sure got that one right - as did the guys in the Googleplex and the kid over at Facebook.  We are in love with seeing things on screens - we are in love with the technology that the Internet mainlines into our lives. The content? Well, that's lagging a bit behind. Angry Birds?  Come on now.

It has often been thus with new forms of technology.  Mature content flourishes in mature technology.  In mature technology the issue is not "What can I do?"  The concern is "what can I say?" In mature communication media content dominates; combining nuance, depth and subtlety in pursuit of conceptual clarity is a primary concern. 

In new technologies the fascination is with "What can I do?" Make pictures move, stuff Morse code into a wire, send print, speech and moving images through the air.  Look what we can DO! Isn't that cool?

  The disparity between “do” and “say” usually sorts itself out.  Eventually the "Wow cool, look what I can do!" fascination fades and the subtlety of insightful content creation resurfaces - often more vibrant than before.  It is then that new art forms evolve, communication becomes increasingly nuanced.

  However, it strikes me that the unprecedented speed at which new layers of communication media are evolving is warping that traditional process.  Content struggles to keep up with capacity - hence messages struggle to gain maturity:

"Look, I can point my phone at the bar code next to that coat in the window and click this little thingy and - since I put my size and address info onto the store's website - I can buy it right now, at 3:00 in the morning!!"

"Do you want the coat?"

"No, not really, but how cool is that app!?"

See what I mean?  I'm not saying that there isn't worthwhile content out there in cyberspace. There is. However, at this point in time, increasingly the tail wags the dog. Actually the tail is wagging the puppy.

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Kick the Phone to the Curb

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I teach about communication and technology, so it makes sense that I tell my students that they will wake up everyday out of date.  It is not really a new concept – sages since the dawn of time have been telling us that “you cannot step in the same river twice,” or words to that effect.  But time was when the notion wasn’t rubbed in our face the way it is today.  So what if Og, a couple of rivers and a mountain range away, was chipping a new axe head that would let him skin mammoths faster?  Big deal. When, or if, I ran into him he could tell me about it – or maybe eventually his kids could tell mine.  Time meandered.  But yesterday I learned that the world was in a lather to learn whether or not a K-9 corp dog was on the mission to kill Bin Laden.  What breed? How big? Did he/she carry technology? Canine tech? Do you really care?  Do you really want, or need, to know?

A corollary to my admonition to my students needs to be that out-of-date doesn’t necessarily mean out-of-touch with reality.  On occasion the opposite is true, sometimes that which is newly-minted, all shiny and popular, will also lead you astray.

It has been a long time since I have ranted about cell phones, now known as smartphones - too long.  So, I am now officially going on record as advocating that for many of us the time has come to kick the “smartphone” to the curb along with the 8-track, the Walkman, and the VCR.  Are you sensing an odd turn of example here?  Those are pieces of old technology – and the smartphone is the latest and greatest right?  No, not really.  For me the smartphone is the latest victim of technological Darwinism, they have become a branch that needs some heavy pruning here in the technology rose garden.

This is, however, not a universal condemnation of those smarty-pants phones.  It is restricted to “people like me.”  You see, despite myriad marketing claims to the contrary, no one technology platform can be all things to all people.  The tool is only a good tool if it meets your needs.  Too often we get that backwards.  We think, “Everybody has one.  I should too.  And if it does things differently, well,  I’m no old dog! I can learn new tricks!”  Personally, I have no desire to roll over and play dead for the smart phone.  And if you are, in some degree, a person like me, you might want to join the revolution.

OK, what defines a person like me? Here we go:

A person like me carries reading glasses.  I have always been visually challenged, but starting back at about 50 I had to begin using reading glasses in addition to my contact lenses.  So, I now need reading glasses to read my Droid, which has a larger screen than an iPhone.  And that is just to read the name of who is calling me - big stuff, center screen.  Surf the web?  Oh, sure.   Now, I need my reading glasses and a magnifying glass.  Maybe there is one here in the glove compartment. Oops.  Wrong lane.

A person like me never learned to “keyboard” and has hands larger than your average six-year old.  You can see where I am going with this.  My Droid has a cool little keyboard hidden underneath the touch screen upon which five-year olds and hobbits – who know how to keyboard – can easily use their apps by typing tiny words upon the tiny screen.  If you don’t want to use that keyboard, you can use the on-screen touch keyboard.  OK, it is a little smaller than the other keyboard – but don’t worry, when you touch a letter, the letter you are touching pops up on the screen.  That would reveal errors that would prompt you move to another key if you could, a: read the letter on the screen and b: knew where it lived on the keyboard.

Apparently, smarty phones also don't like the fingers of people like me.  Last night my wife and I were driving home.  Issues of import were unfolding in places far away.  First, her phone rang.  She touched and dragged, touched and dragged.  The icons were unimpressed and resolute.  They remained steadfast as the phone warbled along into voicemail.  Then my phone buzzed.  I thumbed and dragged, thumbed and dragged until finally the phone relented and connected the call.  I understand I can overcome this problem by using a small sausage as a stylus, which is an awesome solution.

A person like me makes actual phone calls in preference to texting.  Miniaturization is, as I have noted in the preceding paragraphs, a wonderful thing.  I note with especial awe the miniaturization of the receiver and microphone in my Droid and the various smart phones of my friends.  They are crammed right in there with the keyboard and the still camera and the video camera, and all that has been sacrificed is the ability to capture or reproduce sound with any fidelity during a phone conversation.  I am somewhat puzzled since these same gadgets seem to be able to record audio suitable for YouTube and play back mp3 files through ear buds with relative fidelity.  Phone calls, however, those become exercises in conjecture.  Rarely do I have any idea of what is being said to me.  Fortunately, I have years of experience in both cocktail parties and faculty meetings which enables me to respond to most unintelligible remarks with phrases that occasionally make sense. The downside is, of course, those times when my responses have nothing to do with the other side of the conversation.  My hope is that those to whom I am speaking are also faking it. Wait, maybe if I stick my finger in my other ear .  .  . Oops.  Wrong lane.

A person like me remains uncomfortable with the idea that a cell phone should get its own seat at the table.  I realize that in the 1950s the television began to claim a place in the living room.  Now it often gets the whole room.  I suppose you could try to talk over it, but surround-sound makes that difficult.  So we shut up and let the TV do the talking.  Nowadays, people position their phones on the table so it can share in, if not dominate, the conversation.  It has somehow gained the same dispensation as a precocious child - it can interrupt whenever it wants because, well, it is just so cute.  "Seen and not heard?"  My, what a quaint concept!

A person like me resents having to pay .  .  . doesn't have pockets where the thing fits .  .  .  .  can't merge contacts on .  .  . . well, I could go on.  But I will restrain myself.

So what is the point you ask?  Should those who share my biases and complaints retreat back into the 20th century?  Hook our phones to the wall with wire?  Pass on the pleasures of the Internet?  Au contraries, mon frère!  All I am suggesting is that we considered the attractions of other tools.

I would assert that my iPad or Xoom or any other of the emerging tablet computers excel at everything my Droid can do.  My iPad does it better and faster on a bigger screen that I can read and which actually recognizes my fingers.  The color and sound is better, the battery life far superior.  And it does more - I can paint on my iPad :-)  I have stayed with the wi-fi option as opposed to paying another arm and a leg to connect to the latest G3, 4, or 5 network.  Even with that cheap option I can sit just about anywhere, in the bathtub [very carefully], in coffee shops, in McDonalds, in parks, and there is usually an wi-fi network that allows me to iPad away.  And if I actually need to talk with someone - well, now for that I need a cell phone.  But it can be pretty cheap, and really stupid.
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Compassionate Privacy

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It would be nice if Mark Zuckerberg had actually said, "Privacy is so 20th century." But if he did, I can find no credible reference. However, the phrase does seem to capture the essence of his remarks about "changing social norms regarding privacy" that Facebook seeks to champion. There is evidence, though, that Eric Schmidt, the out-going CEO of Google, did actually say, "We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about," and "If you have something you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Taken as a whole, these remarks reveal an unsettling trend toward mandating excessive sharing; like making you eavesdrop on cell phone calls about medical procedures in a coffee shop. Yeech.



This move to obsessive openness isn't a generational issue. Yes, Zuckerberg is 26, but Schmidt is 55. The phenomenon seems more a kind of “BigTech”-induced simplemindedness. Both Internet "A-listers" appear to view "privacy" as an archaic abuse of privilege: someone - your parents, your boss, "the man" - is “hiding” something to advantage themselves and disadvantage you, your friends, or "the people." I do wish privacy were that simple.



Certainly, there is a whole realm of hidden information that is venal and vindictive. We have seen too many examples of the misuse of governmental, corporate and personal secrecy to blithely assume an open and truthful world. People are "disappeared," elections are engineered, banks collapse, lakes become sewers, and the Gulf of Mexico is despoiled. One would be a fool to deny that webs of secrecy enable these human failings. But those webs of secrecy have been around for centuries. Their existence does not entitle the new digital Dons to rip away the gentle curtains of privacy that shield every human life. To acknowledge deceit does not deny the need for compassionate privacy. The Internet’s ability to peer into the most cherished and sheltered spaces in someone’s life does not legitimize the practice.

Perhaps much of the confusion surrounding the debate regarding Internet privacy stems from different entities using similar words to mean different things. “Privacy” and “secrecy” have become co-mingled to the extent that they are erroneously seen as being synonymous. However, the Oxford English Dictionary defines privacy as “The state or condition of being alone, undisturbed, or free from public attention, as a matter of choice or right; seclusion; freedom from interference or intrusion.” While secrecy is defined as “the quality of being secret or of not revealing secrets; the action, practice, or habit of keeping things secret.”

The “open life” advocates, among whom I would place both Zuckerberg and Schmidt use “privacy” when they really mean “secrecy.” Julian Assange provides perhaps the most salient contemporary example of the difference. As the majordomo of Wikileaks, Assange is secrecy’s fiercest antagonist. He obviously believes that, in the public sphere, no secret is sacred. For Assange, when governments and businesses are concerned, awkward transparency trumps the effective “habit of keeping things secret” every time. However, when the issue is what transpired in a Swedish bedroom among adults, privacy, “the right to be free from public attention” suddenly reigns supreme in his worldview.

Still, Zuckerberg and Schmidt did get a couple of things right. First, it is “complicated.” As personal information becomes increasingly valuable in the core human arenas of conflict and commerce, the ceaseless dance of Spy versus Spy drives the development of Internet-based applications that allow the gracious sphere of privacy to be punctured as never before. Second, those routine perforations of the very fabric of our lives have rightfully relegated many naïve assumptions regarding privacy to the previous century. What I believe Zuckerberg and Schmidt have gotten wrong are the implications of these realities for public policy.

The “open lifers” seem to reason that since privacy currently lies in tatters, we should simply affirm that state as acceptable: what is, is right. I have trouble with that notion. I believe we are capable of a more nuanced approach to life in the digital age, that we can devise processes that deliver the advantages of the Internet without turning our private lives into peep shows.

Let me close with a story from my life. When I was in college, shortly after the surrender at Yorktown, we were required to live in the dorm. There were 10 young men on my hall, in their teens, away from adult supervision for the first time. “This,” I thought, “is what they mean by ‘chaos theory.’” There was no privacy, ever. Oh, certainly, you could retreat to your room where only your roommate, and whomever he brought to visit, punctured your solitude. But that was as tranquil as it got. Graduation changed my life in many ways. In retrospect, one of the most profound shifts was the ability to live in a house where I could walk in and close the door. And behind that door I found “the state or condition of being alone, undisturbed, or free from public attention.” I found privacy.

I do not believe that, as a culture, we are intellectually or technically unable to craft hardware, software, and policy that allows us to occasionally turn off the lights of the Internet and just "shut the door."
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