I live out in the sticks, but I try to keep informed of the
latest developments in tech and trends.
For this, I rely on a former colleague, L., who is still in touch with
what’s hip and hot in the Bay Area and beyond.
And I am now informed of something that leads me to believe that
[crotchety old man voice] this whole steampunk thing has gone too far.
Everyone has a cell phone, everyone texts and tweets and
twerps and what-all. How to set
yourself apart from, and above, the madding crowd, be steampunk, and still be
connected?
Enter the cellular telegraph. It’s a beautifully made brass and mahogany
telegraph key that fastens on to, and plugs into, an i-phone. An app called “dah-dit” converts your tappings
into a signal that gets sent to a friend, whose dah-dit-equipped phone makes
the noises that correspond to your dots and dashes. They can then reply in Morse code.
Apparently, it’s gotten to be quite a thing among
steampunk-y youth, and it’s easy to see why.
Like skateboarding, communicating in Morse is a trivial skill that takes
copious time to get good at. Like a high
school clique, it excludes those that haven’t learned the code (not to mention
parents). Like a jeweled cell phone skin,
the telegraph key attachment is expensive and casually flauntable. And hey, it involves a cell phone. So now, instead of being in the same room and
texting each other, L. reports students in the same room
telegraphing each other. And apparently,
as in days of old, people can recognize each other by their “accents” as they
dot and dash.
L. reported a couple
of classroom experiences interrupted by loud bursts of Morse Code and embarrassment
on the part of an eccentrically dressed student fumbling to mute a cellular
telegraph. I suggested that L. should
wait a year or so, and expect to see students waving semaphore flags at each
other across the quad.
