Telephone

Cro-Magnon man could walk, run, hide in a cave. When you had diarrhea you could hide behind a bush, but everyone knew. Your family, your group, knew your ass, your guts, you knew theirs. With agriculture man came to live in "houses." By Roman times the rich lived in houses that afforded "privacy." Unable to see out, others unable to see in, you could abide in the bosom of your hearth, imagining that you were safe: and, once Hannibal was defeated, you were: for the moment. The Romans did the kicking, everyone else in reach got kicked.

By the time of the British version of empire the rich man lived in a house. He didn't answer the door, a butler answered the door, or a maid, or his perfectly behaved wife, or his perfectly behaved child. In the office outsiders could reach the rich man only through his secretary. The sheriff knocked down the door of the poor man, but by 1860, if the sheriff thought the plantation owner had committed murder, the sheriff rode up to the plantation house, bowing, showing deference: the black butler would answer the door, the black butler would show deference to the sheriff while the sheriff showed deference to the plantation owner in the person of the black butler. Eventually the sheriff would stammer out a message, Please, if it pleases, I have come, to, with your permission, arrest you, Your Ownership.

By the early Twentieth Century Hollywood was inventing itself. Movies that a short time before would have been made in NY or NJ or Chicago were made in Hollywood, near the hills above LA. Charlie Chaplin, a London music hall transplant, redefined fame while he redefined film wealth. Chaplin was the first film star to sign a contract for $1,000 a week. It made headlines everywhere. Chaplin, at the time of signing, asked could they make it $1,025? What was the $25 for? I need something to live on, he answered. Chaplin was planning to spend the entire big bill on production: he himself could live nearly on air. Before long Chaplin was making one feature film instead of multiple short films: one and two reelers. Chaplin set new financial records when his Modern Times charged $2 admission. The studios said no one would pay it, Chaplin said they would: and they did. Chaplin made a feature every five years or so thereafter, and though he continued to pay salaries to favorites such as Edna Purviance for decades in exchange for no obligations on their part whatsoever, Chaplin kept a great deal of the money from his features for himself and his own private uses. Ah, you may think, so that's why he lived out his old age with Eugene O'Neil's daughter, Oona, on a mountain in Switzerland, vacationing on the Riviera at will. No. Chaplin's Hollywood wealth paled beside the money he'd made by putting his Hollywood wealth into the phone company.

Chaplin got rich enough in Hollywood to become very rich on Wall Street; but, Chaplin wouldn't allow one of the black beasts into his home. If you wanted to sell Chaplin a Fuller brush, you had to knock on his door and deal with the butler. Chaplin, the twentieth-century rich man, had no phone.

Knatz.com's Teaching / Thinking Tools repeated Gregory Bateson's comments on communication under the metaphor of the game telephone. Gather people, have a party. Assign person A to write a brief message on a piece of paper and hand it to person Z. Person A then whispers the message to person B who whispers it to person C. When "the message" has been passed to all participants, that person declares the message aloud. Person Z then reads the original written version of the message. Commonly there will be little resemblance between the "original" signal and the message as relayed.

I was just doing something in the bedroom. The phone rang. Rather than answer the bedroom phone I walked to my desk chair by my Mac, in the front of the house, sat down, and picked up. A voice with an accent that may have been from the subcontinent, some form of "Indian," said something that I interpreted to mean, Am I Mr. Knatz? Yes, I said and endured some more noise in that accent. "I don't hear well," I explained. "So far I've understood nearly nothing of what you've said." I listened further, assuming that it was a telemarketer, but not having proved it yet. I next explained that of the latest barrage I'd herd one word, but still made no sense of it: something Alliance.

Why wasn't the butler taking care of this for me? Why wasn't my perfectly behaved wife? or child?

Nah. I had to hang up on her myself.