Tuesday, September 24, 2013

On wooden ships and foxhole radios



Foxhole radio - c. 1942

We commemorated the two-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie a few weeks ago. On September 10, 1813, a rag-tag group of American sailors led by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry beat the British fleet at Put-in-Bay, Ohio. This decisive battle was a major factor in resolving the War of 1812. Perry is memorialized in his home state of Rhode Island and at Presque Island, Pennsylvania, where six of his nine-ship fleet were built by hand, from their keels up.

In a seemingly unrelated event, National Public Radio recently aired an appreciative retrospective about AM radio. Listeners called in and recounted tales of making crystal radios from scratch. Veterans of World War II remembered building “foxhole radios” which used a razor blade and pencil as a detector to pull music and comedy skits from the ether, cheering an otherwise grim battlefield.

These disparate observations illustrate an important point. For nearly all of humankind’s existence, we lived in close proximity to our various technologies. You could either weave cloth from wool yourself or knew someone who could. And at the very least, you were certainly capable of understanding how it was done. Nearly anyone could become a blacksmith or learn to grow and reap a crop of wheat. Or build a wooden ship, or a radio.

It is only in the past fifty years or so, the briefest tick of human existence, that our technologies have become so complex, so remote.

Former backyard mechanics joke that one now needs a double degree in mechanical and computer engineering to build a car. But the joke is true. Fifty years ago, we could adjust the point gap and timing, change the carburetor jets, and really understand what was happening. Today, we look at our shiny new iPhone and haven’t a clue that it uses quantum tunneling effects to store our silly cat video, a concept that bedeviled Albert Einstein himself (quantum tunneling, that is, not the cat videos, but one wonders what he would have thought of them).

This evolution of complexity and technological remoteness will accelerate, and it will do so exponentially. Our children and their children will live in a world far removed from crystal radios and backyard brake jobs. This isn’t a bad thing. Technology has given us wonderful advances leading to notably longer human life spans.

But, yet, a wedge is being driven into our humanity, separating us from the world that nurtures us. It’s not that we shouldn’t celebrate the advent of autonomous (driver-less) cars and nano-engineered robots, but we need to retain our connectedness to Mother Earth. It is important to know how to grow a tomato and how to make your own sauce. While enjoying the constant chatter of Facebook, you must write an actual letter, in your own hand, to express your love to a distant elderly relative.

So let’s revel in this wild ride we're all on together, but don’t forget to take that quiet walk in the woods with the iPhone shut off. The silly cat video can wait a bit. 

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Heart vs. Brain... a most difficult struggle



It is so terribly difficult to be objective. Our throbbing hearts feel so strongly that our cool, rational heads just don’t stand a chance. 

Case in point – the ACLU is preparing to sue Northeastern University in Boston on behalf of the Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP). The university stands accused of violating the free speech rights of the pro-Palestinian students who disrupted a lecture being given by Israeli Defense Force (IDF) representatives.

WGBH radio describes the incident as such:

“Back in April, the group Students for Justice in Palestine staged a walkout of a presentation by Israeli soldiers inside a lecture hall at Northeastern. Their goal, they say, was to protest human rights abuses in the Middle East. More than 20 students marched out. Some captured video with their smartphones. Others heckled the soldiers, calling them criminals.”

"They’re not welcome on our campus," some shouted. "Free! Free! Palestine!"

The Boston Globe, WGBH, and the blogosphere are alight with outrage over Northeastern’s sanctions which include putting the SJP on probation and asking them to draft a civility statement. The common theme is that the university’s actions constitute a “chilling effect on free speech." Apparently the free-speech rights of the SJP protestors trump those of the IDF presenters and the interested folks in the lecture hall.

Why is it so tempting to side with the SJP protestors? Because they are small and Northeastern is large? Because the Palestinians for whom they toil are few and Israel is many? Is there no application of logic to balance a knee-jerk sympathy?

Let’s take this situation and tweak the actors a bit. In a hypothetical situation, imagine New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as head of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, presenting a lecture at Northeastern University. As he begins a full-throated call for increased gun control, an assemblage of Student Republicans stand to shout him down, waving signs which depict Bloomberg as a modern-day Hitler. The university sanctions the student group, putting them on probation and asking them to draft a civility statement. What will the ACLU do? Where do you stand?

Or this…

Planned Parenthood is delivering a policy lecture at Northeastern University. Within moments, a delegation of Catholic pro-life students rise up, displaying signs depicting aborted fetuses and decrying the murder of children. The university sanctions the student group, putting them on probation and asking them to draft a civility statement. What will the ACLU do? Where do you stand?

Freedom of speech does not depend on the popularity of various positions. It is not limited to only aggrieved groups. In the foregoing real and hypothetical examples, it extends to not only the protestors, but to the presenters and the audiences (yes, the freedom to listen is part of free speech). So before maligning and suing Northeastern University, perhaps the principles being applied should be elevated over political sympathies.

It is so terribly difficult to be objective. But we must try.