When I was little our house had a party line. That doesn’t mean we had people queuing up on the sidewalk outside to enter a continuous party my family opened to the public. It was a land phone line connected to four other phones. Each family on the line had an assigned number of rings when a call came in. Eventually, everyone knew the other people on the party line because there was no way to know if the line was free short of picking up the phone and listening. Obviously, that often meant interrupting someone else’s phone call in progress. Want to see people deal with a party line? Rent the Doris Day-Rock Hudson movie called Pillow Talk.
Do you think an intrusion by the NSA into your private phone calls is the first kind of eavesdropping? The truth is that we’ve been playing the Game of Phones since Paleolithic peoples used smoke signals, bullroarers, turnduns, and didgeridoos, and in more contemporary times, the nineteenth century’s telegraph and the aforementioned twentieth century’s party lines.
I bet the NSA, the FBI, the CIA and any other spy agency all wish for a return of such past technologies. No high tech was needed during the ages of bullroarers, telegraph messages, and party lines. One could listen to the sound projected by bullroarers, read the message at the telegraph office, or quietly pick up the party line phone to listen. Then again, the newer technologies do make for easier duplication and preservation. Our personal private kingdoms are always under potential attack by dragons that can burn our conversations onto a CD, DVD, hard drive, or jump drive.
Primitive technology gave us both ease of communication and ease of eavesdropping, but it had limitations. As civilized people, we wanted ease of communication and something more reliable than a smoke signal on a windy day or a bullroarer during a thunderstorm. Modern tech gave us new mechanisms with even more intrusive reach into our private lives.
Will privacy ever return? Sure, if we want to put down the phone, the computer, and all their embedded ways to connect people. But there’s nothing new in this. Even Paleolithic people couldn’t achieve privacy unless they disengaged from the tech to which they were addicted. “Hey, Yugg, people over there are reading your smoke signal and listening to your bullroarer message. You need to put out your fire and stop that shouting if you don’t want them to know what you’re saying to your ex.”
Think of people-watching. Why do we do it? Admit it. You’ve been at an airport, a resort, a…why am I giving you a list? You’ve done some people-watching wherever you encountered people to watch. So, come on, admit it, also: If you had a party line, wouldn’t you, upon picking up the phone and hearing a conversation in progress, yield to the temptation to listen for a few seconds before you quietly hung up? Now can you really blame the NSA for some eavesdropping? Maybe they’re just a bunch of curious people interested in what you have to say about your neighbor’s torrid affair, her recipe for crab cakes, or the town’s politics. Not.
In the modern world, we’ve added personal spying to intergovernmental spying to a degree never before seen. We’re beyond just reading smoke signals and listening to someone’s bullroarer. And it’s not just specific words that we capture, as you know. Pictures and videos, those messages worth a thousand words, make the spying even more intrusive. Town gossip has turned into national and even world gossip. Seems that the Game of Phones we all play is one whose outcome is the complete unveiling of everyone, a conquering of private worlds; and if we add implanted hackable brain chips, the eavesdropping will be complete.
Don’t want to lose your privacy? Don’t play the Game of Phones.
Do you think an intrusion by the NSA into your private phone calls is the first kind of eavesdropping? The truth is that we’ve been playing the Game of Phones since Paleolithic peoples used smoke signals, bullroarers, turnduns, and didgeridoos, and in more contemporary times, the nineteenth century’s telegraph and the aforementioned twentieth century’s party lines.
I bet the NSA, the FBI, the CIA and any other spy agency all wish for a return of such past technologies. No high tech was needed during the ages of bullroarers, telegraph messages, and party lines. One could listen to the sound projected by bullroarers, read the message at the telegraph office, or quietly pick up the party line phone to listen. Then again, the newer technologies do make for easier duplication and preservation. Our personal private kingdoms are always under potential attack by dragons that can burn our conversations onto a CD, DVD, hard drive, or jump drive.
Primitive technology gave us both ease of communication and ease of eavesdropping, but it had limitations. As civilized people, we wanted ease of communication and something more reliable than a smoke signal on a windy day or a bullroarer during a thunderstorm. Modern tech gave us new mechanisms with even more intrusive reach into our private lives.
Will privacy ever return? Sure, if we want to put down the phone, the computer, and all their embedded ways to connect people. But there’s nothing new in this. Even Paleolithic people couldn’t achieve privacy unless they disengaged from the tech to which they were addicted. “Hey, Yugg, people over there are reading your smoke signal and listening to your bullroarer message. You need to put out your fire and stop that shouting if you don’t want them to know what you’re saying to your ex.”
Think of people-watching. Why do we do it? Admit it. You’ve been at an airport, a resort, a…why am I giving you a list? You’ve done some people-watching wherever you encountered people to watch. So, come on, admit it, also: If you had a party line, wouldn’t you, upon picking up the phone and hearing a conversation in progress, yield to the temptation to listen for a few seconds before you quietly hung up? Now can you really blame the NSA for some eavesdropping? Maybe they’re just a bunch of curious people interested in what you have to say about your neighbor’s torrid affair, her recipe for crab cakes, or the town’s politics. Not.
In the modern world, we’ve added personal spying to intergovernmental spying to a degree never before seen. We’re beyond just reading smoke signals and listening to someone’s bullroarer. And it’s not just specific words that we capture, as you know. Pictures and videos, those messages worth a thousand words, make the spying even more intrusive. Town gossip has turned into national and even world gossip. Seems that the Game of Phones we all play is one whose outcome is the complete unveiling of everyone, a conquering of private worlds; and if we add implanted hackable brain chips, the eavesdropping will be complete.
Don’t want to lose your privacy? Don’t play the Game of Phones.
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