It's Face Time!

The Bell Maker,  the Bell Ringer,  and the Bell

It’s Face Time!

Once upon a time,  when the bell would ring in the church steeple,  everyone in the village would come running.  Something was up.  Something important.

In the towns and cities,  when the bell in courthouse tower would ring,  the people would come running.  Something was up.  Something important.  Who knows?  Someone just might be reading a declaration of independence?       

The bell is big.  The bell makes a sound so big that everyone can hear it,  even those people who can’t hear it,  or hear it so

well – The vibrations cutting through the still,  silent air.  Where would be without the bell?  Who came up with the damn thing anyway?  Probably no so much an invention as a discovery,  like Ben Franklin and electricity.  Before the bell there were drums – before bronze there was wood – and before drums?  There was the human voice.  And that’s what this is really all about. 

People don’t change.  We’re not better now than we ever were.  We’re not any worse either.  We’re the same.  We’re greedy and we’re generous.  We’re mean and we’re compassionate.  We’re really kind of all over the map,  a mess in progress.  The only thing that does change is technology.  And technology doesn’t change us so much as make us more of what we already are :  It makes the good in us better,  and the bad in us worse – The Gutenberg Bible to Mien Kampf.  The Arab Spring to Killer Drones.  When that bell in that small town,  or that drum in the small village sounded it meant  ‘Come here,  and bring everyone with you!  Something is up!  Something important!’  The drummer and the bell ringer were just as important as the news about to be imparted.  Or as someone said a long time ago :  ‘The medium is the message’.  I used to think that was a bad thing but now … I’m not so sure.

So I’m watching a commercial for the iPhone.  It shows all different kinds of people talking to one another – but not just talking –  Facetime!  I mean how cool is Facetime?  There’s a dad on a business trip talking to his daughter,  helping her with her math homework.  A mom calling her son in college.  You know,  all kinds of schmaltzy stuff like that,  but then there’s this shot of a woman speaking sign language to another woman on the other end responding in kind.  Wow!  And Apple wasn’t even playing it up,  grandstanding,  you know,  stomping it,  like those people in Italy who stomp grapes,  for all the  ‘Because we care about you!’  P.R. juice they could squeeze out of it.  It was just … there.  No big whoops.    

Wow.

Is it me?  Or is this one of the most significant breakthroughs for the handicapped in general and the hearing impaired specifically in  like … history?  Shouldn’t every person with a hearing impairment get one of these things?  Shouldn’t they be subsidized by the government?  The ADA or something?  I mean,  they busted every freakin’ curb on every freakin’ street corner in the country to accommodate people in wheelchairs.  Isn’t a phone that deaf people can actually use just as much a priority?

We don’t change.  Technology does.  But technology does change our lives and how,  and how well,  we live it.  Was a time indoor plumbing was considered a luxury.  I can think of a dozen or more technological advances that evolved from novelty to necessity overnight.  Sure,  if you want to be a purist,  all you really need is a lean-to,  a fire and a sharp rock to survive.  And you would have a healthy life expectancy of … a sickly canary.  Anything that makes our world cleaner and safer enhances our existence,  as a person and as a group.  Certainly the telephone has earned its place in that ‘necessity’  column.  And anything that helps us communicate with each other  faster and clearer and better?  That’s not a luxury.  That’s not a necessity.  That’s the very essence of civilization. 

The Bell is big.  It makes a sound so big that everyone can hear it.  Even those who can’t hear,  or hear so well – The vibrations cutting through the still and silent air.  You don’t need eardrums to know it’s thundering.  In the steeple,  or in the courthouse tower,  or in your pocket,  the bell rings and the people come running.  Something’s up.  Something important.   Who knows,  someone might be reading a declaration of independence.

Mabel Gardiner Hubbard was deaf. 

Her husband invented the telephone.

In the words of the great Henry Gibson : ‘Marshall Mcluhan … Whatcha doin’?”          

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