At the same time, with a $95 donation, that's the early bird price that's not available anywhere else but here on WBAI.
Call 516-620-3602 or go to www.givetowwbai.org and put Clearwater in the search box.
See you at the festival!
Yes, and you are listening to Radio Station WBAI New York. It's 7 o'clock. Time once again for Off The Hook.
I hope that's understood from Diddley Bo.
It's a negative landscape.
And the funny thing is that I think even those kinds of shirts and logos and brands are less
popular now that, I don't know, people are not as afraid of wearing that kind of stuff
now.
Maybe the garment industry has changed so much that you can wear brands like that.
But at the time, that was a big no-no, and I had no idea.
I was buying records.
We're more focused on getting swastikas off shirts, so I guess we'll get to the major
brands later.
Yeah, I think there's other brands that are less corporate that are more controversial.
But at the time, yeah, and that night, I think, is when all the windows got smashed, the black
block was out.
It was hardcore.
There was tear gas everywhere.
And if I can loop this around, you also were a listener way back then.
I was, yeah.
I was a burgeoning young hacker, and I like to think I still am.
But it was really formative, and I was getting involved in, well, I had listened to a lot
of different radio in my community, but there was less good community radio at that point.
Wow, I don't hear that often.
There was less good community radio in the past.
Well, it was, I would be more, I'm just saying me personally, I would have been more apt
to listen to a commercial station, maybe a late night program that not very many people
listened to.
I did listen to KBCS and some of the other stations for good talk programming and stuff.
But somehow you found off the hook.
I found off the hook.
I did.
I was interested in hacking, and of course, our publication, and what hackers were doing.
I found that really interesting because, well, this was when the OS wars were going on, and
I didn't realize that there were even other operating systems like Linux and Unix, and
I was really challenging myself.
I wanted to get into other things, things that involved the command line, and well,
it really took me on a very interesting odyssey, as I think many burgeoning hackers have found
themselves learning about things and being a sort of hacker and a generalist of sorts.
So this drives home the point of how radio reaches people all around the world, how it
affects them.
I think this was before the Word podcast.
The P word had not existed yet.
You know, I'm not sure.
You were streaming a hacker radio show.
And we were one of the first to do that, but I think it was right about the time, 97, 96,
that area, we were one of the first radio shows to go on the internet.
I remember that.
And you can listen to all of this online in the off the hook section of 2600.com.
You can hear the shows where we experimented with real audio, and we were getting phone
calls from Asia.
It was really amazing.
And that's when we started to realize the potential of not only the internet, but of
radio stations interconnecting with the internet.
I can echo some of your story, Kyle, because I too was a listener back before I met any
of you guys, you know, about 100 years ago.
And around that time, I remember listening to the Amy Goodman getting smoke bombed live.
I remember listening to the protests here at the station live.
And I was at my workplace at the time, which was I used to run an arcade.
And I would play BAI on the radio there because, you know, any music would get drowned out,
but you could hear talk radio.
And so I'm up at the counter, I've got my little radio, usually tuned to BAI, especially
during this program.
And people who had just come into the establishment had, you know, would occasionally start listening
with me.
And it got interesting when, yeah, when Amy Goodman was coughing out in the middle of
the road while trying to report the news and things like that.
And it really, like, I think I got BAI a couple of more listeners that way, because I'd get
asked, what are you listening to?
What is this?
And how are they allowed to talk about this stuff, hacking on the air?
There were so many moments in that one show, I remember, we were hearing cops issuing commands
to people.
And they sounded like Darth Vader, that they were basically speaking through their gas
masks.
And that was what we were broadcasting over New York radio.
Another thing is, it's incredible to think, and maybe a lot of our younger listeners don't
realize this, but this show itself has been on the air for 31 years, I think we're coming
up to.
That's an incredible feat in and of itself.
That's amazing.
And to build on the old Amy Goodman points, too, if I recall correctly, there was a certain
president that called into Democracy Now.
Maybe it was back in 2000?
No.
He didn't intentionally call into Democracy Now.
In fact, he didn't intentionally call BAI, he called a lot of radio stations, and happened
to have somebody take the call seriously at WBAI, and hand the phone to Amy, who proceeded
to ask Bill Clinton all these questions.
This was election eve, or election day, 2000.
And to his credit, he stuck on the phone, he answered them, and I wish he had acted
like that for his presidency.
He defended his policies and his opinion, and it was great to see somebody actually
take him on, because the mass media at the time was not doing that.
Well, and this speaks to the real power of WBAI as well, because if you think about a
lot of the criticism that we may take is that, you know, oh, our show is too political, we're
too tough on the Trump administration.
Well, Amy Goodman was really, really tough that particular day on President Clinton.
I remember she was asking him really tough questions about things like, you know, why
isn't there a federal moratorium on the death penalty?
What are you doing?
You know, you're executing innocent people.
Really, really tough questions.
I mean, if you think about, you know, the function of WBAI right now, to go back to
that point again, if this station is useless, then nobody should support it, right?
I mean, then it should just go to the wayside of history, just like, I don't know, WPLJ
or something like that, right?
Oh, wow.
You know, it's too soon.
They're still on the air.
Oh, are they really?
God.
Yeah.
May 31st, that's their last day.
Is that right?
That doesn't really happen, though, because even if it wasn't broadcasting this stuff
and, quote, useful, right, the Christian radio or the country station would find it
useful, right?
To get their message out.
Yeah, no doubt.
No doubt.
Well, there'd be a Christian or country station or a country Christian station on the air
if we did something, if we changed our format.
But the point is it's not useless, right?
There is a real function for WBAI.
If you look at the political climate that we're in right now, where you have the daily
mendacity of the Trump administration, the constant assaults on the very notion of the
truth.
We have white nationalism on the rise.
Leave Trump alone.
I'll try.
I'll try.
Wait.
What are you saying?
Why am I even agreeing with you?
I'm trying new phrases.
All right.
That one didn't land.
But just be patient with me.
I'm trying.
I'm trying here.
But think about it.
He's doing the best.
To go back to Trump, there's things like white nationalism on the rise.
We have intolerance on the rise.
Stations like WBAI are needed now more than ever because what we need is dialogue.
And what you get in this show and every other show on WBAI is dialogue.
And in fact, we are one of the Pacifica stations that doesn't play music, not like that station
down in D.C. that plays jazz quite frequently.
We're criticizing other Pacifica stations now.
Why not?
If it benefits us, I'm all for it.
Okay.
No.
Let's start an internal war.
That's great.
I mean, we've done it before.
We're making an argument for the support of WBAI.
If we have to cast aspersions on other Pacifica stations, I've got no problem with that.
Why don't we cast aspersions on other stations locally?
We can start with that.
And then we can move on to other parts of the country.
I don't listen to any other local stations.
All right.
Well, that's a start.
That's good.
You know, if I could, I would.
So the only other stations I know are Pacifica stations.
And I'll support them too.
But I'll also cast aspersions on them.
How about NPR stations?
Why shouldn't you donate to an NPR station, get a nice little tote bag or something instead
of WBAI?
I mean, yeah, do both if you can.
But why is WBAI a better investment?
Because you know, we've heard all things considered all throughout the country.
You drive around the country, there's so many times you can hear all things considered
on every station, all this syndication, it's such nonsense.
Plus they have all this, you know, these corporate sponsors already.
We don't have that.
It's very, very important for you to call 516-620-3602, help support WBAI, help support
off the hook.
Explain it to me about corporate sponsor, because that's not something that's said around
here very often.
You might be able to explain this better than I could.
But my understanding of it is that there are a lot of corporations that will donate large
monies and they will say this is brought to you by this, that, and the other corporation.
And even though they're not necessarily playing a commercial, you're still hearing their name
over and over and over again.
They'd often operate under the guise of perhaps a corporate foundation or a family foundation
that made their millions, billions, and trillions from a corporate entity who perhaps fought
against environmental legislation, whatever it is.
That's how they get their underwriting.
You could say this is all things considered brought to you by the Trump Foundation, because
that's exactly the kind of organization you just described.
A good, altruistic, you know, they made their money in the marketplace and they just want
to give back.
Tax write-off?
Exactly.
We don't do that.
We don't do that.
We go on the air and we say Trump Foundation sucks.
We say Verizon sucks.
We say AT&T sucks.
We say all kinds, we can say anything because they're not sponsoring us.
One thing we will not say, we will not say our listeners suck because they don't.
However, there is one point to be clarified is that if you do donate to WBLA, let's say
you do want to donate, I don't know, a couple thousand dollars right now, maybe half a million.
That would shut us up.
It would shut us up.
We'd stop right now.
We'd just get on with it.
But my understanding is it is a tax-deductible donation, so that's a good thing for you.
You never know when you're going to need a deduction from your annual income.
So think about that.
We don't accept these huge tax-free donations from major corporations.
We're not constantly saying their name.
The only name of a corporate entity that you're probably going to hear over and over again
is like Kyle mentioned, the Trump Organization here, and not necessarily in the best light.
Probably not.
Probably not.
Okay.
Well, we might as well, since we've gone into this, tell people what we're offering tonight
because maybe people want to get something really cool in exchange for their donation
of $100 to 516-620-3602.
If you simply ask for the Hacker Digest lifetime subscription, what you will get is an incredible
library of history and also future news because this is a lifetime subscription to 2600 digitally
in the form of the Hacker Digest.
Now what that means is we go back to volume one from 1984 and give you a PDF of all of
the issues that came out then and do the same thing for every volume that came after
that.
I think we're up to, what, 34 now?
We have been releasing them every three months and we're about to finish doing that.
In fact, in the summertime, I think the very last one will be released from the back issues
and you'll have a complete full library up until the present, which is fantastic and
amazing and it's an incredible resource.
Every year has some amazing bit of history and what we have done, we've basically put
the thing together and analyzed each issue, described what's been going on at that particular
point in history, as well as what all the covers mean, all the covers of 2600 magazine
and a lot of people have asked us that over the years, there have been so many covers.
This is your way of finding out what was behind the thinking of that and also what was happening
in the hacker world, in the technological world, through the eyes of 2600 magazine.
That is yours for a pledge of $100, 516-620-3602.
One caveat, you do need to have an email address because we need to email you this and you
have to be able to accept large files.
By large files, I mean something on the order of 20 megabytes.
Most serious email providers, that's not a problem for.
If you are having trouble with that, we'll work something out.
We'll figure it out.
We've done that in the past.
But this is something we're only offering during this fun drive.
It's something that we normally let go for much more than this and it's quite popular.
But for the WBAI Pledge Drive, for off-the-hook listeners, we are offering this for $100,
a lifetime of the Hacker Digest.
You get everything from the past and everything into the future.
However long the future lasts, we can't predict.
516-620-3602, ask for the Hacker Digest lifetime subscription.
You can also go to give2wbai.org and look up the same thing.
But again, supplies are limited and this is only for WBAI listeners.
And I should point out that for people familiar with getting scanned versions of old magazines
or books or whatnot, this is not just a simple scan of the old issues.
This is like everything's been gone into, made sure everything's readable, everything's
spelled right, there's no crappy OCR mistakes, things like that.
This is a serious undertaking and a real look into what made these issues special and a
real archival effort.
And you can zoom in a lot because it's done at really high quality so you can see those
microscopic messages that are sometimes hidden.
I would just clarify, this is the best quality, but I would say it's the first pass.
We reserve the right.
We may remaster, we may reconfigure, we may repackage, but what we've been doing is creating
and going back and digitizing all of our corpus, the entirety of the back issues into a digital
form that is portable and an added perspective, as Rob was saying, that describes some of
the stuff.
And then, of course, it's of a certain quality level that you can zoom in and check it all
out.
And we wanted to get this prepared in a way so that it was all in one place for people.
And we're doing that specifically for this fundraising effort.
And we're going to get that sent out to you for this pledge level.
Now, I've got a laptop here.
This laptop actually has increased in value quite a bit because I've loaded all of the
existing digest onto it.
So this is a laptop that is fully stocked with 2600 back issues.
And what I'm asking people to do is to pick a volume.
We currently, I believe, we've released volumes 1 through 22, I think, and 25 through 34.
So there's a slight gap, which we're filling this year, and we'll be completely up to date.
So pick a year, double click on it, you'll open up a PDF, and maybe you could tell us
something about what happens during that year, because every volume has a big description
at the beginning.
And that description tells what has been happening in that particular year.
It also says things about the magazine, such as this is a year that we changed our format
or changed our typeface or had a horrible typo on this particular page.
All kinds of fun stories that you can only find out if you are a subscriber to the Hacker
Digest.
And by becoming a lifetime subscriber to the Hacker Digest by pledging to 516-620-3602,
you're getting all this for the best deal possible, and it's something that you will
treasure forever, I think.
They're completely non-DRM copies.
You can trade them, you can put them on multiple systems, you can read them on multiple devices.
They are very portable, and they will last forever.
Now Kyle, did you pick a year?
Did you pick a volume?
Oh yeah, no, I've been looking at the autumn issue of 1988, and this particular article
I found pretty interesting.
It's called Crawling into Manholes.
That's an article?
Crawling into manholes?
Yeah.
I mean this wasn't a particular event of the year, but this is information, and I would
venture to say it's probably still relevant today.
They haven't really changed manhole technology that much, but did you know that round manhole
covers are round so that the lineman doesn't accidentally drop the cover into the manhole?
Wait, say that again?
Round manhole covers are round so that a lineman can't accidentally drop the cover down the
hole.
Well, aren't they round because the hole is round?
These are all good questions.
Doesn't that make more sense?
Wow.
No, I understand that.
It's not going to fall through the hole.
These covers...
Yeah, but it wouldn't go in the hole if it wasn't round.
It wouldn't fit.
It only fits when it's horizontal.
It's not going to drop down vertically.
It has a ledge.
It has a lip on it.
See, these are some of the things I don't get, but there's always things that you don't
get in various issues.
Right, so even if it's perpendicular, the edge, the lip that it sits on would not allow
the entirety of that round object to fall through in any orientation, but no, I just
wanted to read a little excerpt here that goes on to say that these covers are the same
as the standard B, A, and SA type covers once the bolts are removed because they often
have a type C and D manhole that has these locking bolts.
So there's several different types of the manhole covers.
So these are the same ones without the bolts, and the best way to open the cover is to use
a manhole cover lifter.
Wait, we tell people how to open a manhole cover?
Yeah.
This tool is called the Defiance Corp PTS-49 or a B type manhole cover lifter, although
an ordinary three quarter to one inch crowbar hook side can be used.
Put the tool into one of the rim slots and press down on the bar until the hook is pressing
up against the cover flange.
Then push or lift the cover a few inches up and slide it off the hole.
You can use a bent sprinkler turn off wrench on the other side to lift if there are two
of you.
You should not, you shouldn't have no problem with two people.
I would hope there'd be two of you if you're lifting manhole covers off.
Although it can be done alone provided you are strong enough.
One must use good sense when entering a manhole.
One must use good sense when starting this whole thing.
But that just gives you an idea of the kinds of things that we talk about.
Nothing is off limits.
It's amazing that, I didn't even remember this article.
What year was that from Kyle?
1988.
Wow.
That would be volume five I believe.
We've been going through a lot of this because we want to make it look as good as possible
and we have found things in old issues.
And this is true, an internet address, a URL that is pretty interesting.
I just tried entering it to see if it was still there, this amazing security hole.
It was.
It's still there.
Not only is it still there, it's updating.
It's been updating all this time.
And even printing it in our magazine apparently wasn't enough to get it turned off.
So you'll find things like that.
You'll find these amazing holes you can drive a car through.
You'll also just find a lot of theory that still works, still is relevant today.
Plus you'll also find history.
You'll find antiquated things that you couldn't even imagine such as wire telephone networks
and blue boxing and things like that.
All documented, all basically illustrated by hackers, described in ways that are completely
priceless and invaluable.
That is for a pledge of $100, 516-620-3602, the Hacker Digest lifetime subscription.
Limited time, limited availability, but it is an incredible value.
Now Rob, you have the laptop now.
What I'm going to ask you to do is double click on a volume and you'll find this.
We have new covers for all of these, by the way.
We have four covers for every issue that comes out every year.
But then every digest, we have a special cover for that year that we've just put in
this particular project.
And after that is a long description of everything that happened and everything that changed
in the issue.
If you find something interesting in there, that's what I would ask you to focus on.
Or if you find, as Kyle did, an article that you think is of particular interest, but this
is so many articles, you'll be looking for a long, long time.
Do you need more time?
You can talk about other things while you're perusing.
Well, I've just clicked on the digest from 2004, it looks like.
And on the front, it's got a nice cover issue of people wearing t-shirts of the covers from
that year, followed by a little description here.
The 2004 cover format started the tradition of themes that lasted for the entire year.
The autumn issue was again labeled as fall in 2004.
Interesting.
Yeah, we had a big thing where sometimes it was called autumn and sometimes it was called
fall and not sure how that happened.
I think we eventually worked it out so it would be called autumn and we stuck with that,
but there was a transitional period there.
I like it.
It's fancy.
You know, little messages were found in page three, hidden in tiny print within the contents.
And yeah, you can find out what all the messages are, all the secret messages that you might
not even have known were there.
Yeah.
You know, I have that answer in front of me, but I'm not going to read it.
I'm going to let people find this out for themselves because it's fun.
It's a lot of fun.
It's one of those little Easter eggs that turned up every so often.
It's got the titles of the letters section, which is something else that changes every
issue.
Yes.
We never use the same title for the letters column or the editorial or the table of contents.
Letters columns in spring were mind exercises, in summer it was verbal constructs, in fall
it was troublemakers, very apt, and in winter it was back and forth.
All of that describes our letters.
A lot of two-word headings.
Yeah.
All four issues and four covers all had propaganda poster themes.
Each issue had an image with a jingoistic phrase printed on the bottom.
With the exception of winter, each of these images was modified from an actual propaganda
poster.
I bet one of these is, we need more blue boxes.
The U.S. Army.
I remember that.
Yes.
Old war poster.
Yeah.
They've got ordinance boxes that are blue and modified.
So much fun with the covers.
So much amazing artwork has gone into them over the years.
Yeah.
I remember the cover design for all four issues was credited to Dabu Chwald, I think.
How does he pronounce that?
But yeah.
I think it's Dabu Chwald.
Dabu Chwald.
That's how I always say it when I see it.
But you know, who knows?
That's the nature of handles.
Yeah.
Look it up on Wikipedia.
That's what I have to say.
Interesting dude.
But yeah, the spring cover showed a soldier in the midst of a battle carrying a bluish
box containing point detonating M46 fuses.
The message at the bottom says, the Army needs more blue boxes, which was a reference to
the blue boxes of throne freaks, as we know.
But yeah, it goes on like that.
And these are some of the little nice behind the scenes peeks into what goes into the decisions
that make up this magazine, the design behind it, little notes about what was going on that
year, stuff from The Fifth Hope, as I'm scrolling down in this.
And this is all in the new section.
That wasn't in the original magazines.
It's us looking back now at what was going on and what these covers signify.
Sort of an interpretation of the contents and some of the little known parts of the
issue, attributes of it that were special.
One of the things that I've always appreciated about all of the issues, but I think now looking
at them historically, would be extraordinarily interesting for people to look back to the
80s and the 90s and look at the marketplaces at the back of the issues all the time and
see what people were selling way back in the day.
You know, that's all archived in here.
You know, people selling crystals that you can use to modify a Radio Shack tone dialer.
Oh boy.
Make a red box.
Things like that.
Okay, you said a lot there.
Radio Shack, okay, it used to be a store that sold cool things.
I miss it a lot.
Tone dialers, they were things you would hold up to telephones because, well, a lot of people
used rotary dial and they didn't have touch tones.
They didn't have a touch tone phone.
So these little tone dials allowed you to send touch tones through the actual mouthpiece
of the phone.
So it worked on pay phones because sometimes they cut off the touch tones after you connected.
But we also discovered, and this was discovered in our pages, that they could be modified.
These Radio Shack tone dialers could be modified to emit a special frequency at a special pace
that would emulate a quarter being dropped into the telephone.
They were called red boxes and this was the famous Radio Shack tone dialer converter project.
It got to the point where kids walking into Radio Shack buying these tone dialers were
given the third degree and sometimes the sale was refused outright because Radio Shack knew
damn well what they were up to.
Also it resulted in the entire phone network, the entire Bell system having to redesign
all of their pay phones because of this.
So it's no small change what the kinds of things that we have been up to over the years.
A lot of history and the funny thing is that now we're the ones preserving the pay phones
and the phone booths and the phone trucks.
The phone companies couldn't care less about it.
They moved on to the next thing which doesn't sound nearly as good as the old connections.
In fact, I have a letter here from a listener which I think is kind of apropos.
Dear Off The Hook, thanks for your excellent show.
On March 12th, 2018, Verizon entered into a settlement resulting from an investigation
by then Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over Verizon's failure to maintain its copper
network.
Verizon agreed to fix failing copper networks.
The settlement with Verizon required the company to repair 54 central offices across the state,
replace bad cable, defective equipment, faulty backup batteries, etc.
On March 8th, Janet Gasly-Martin, Verizon Director of Network Transformation in New
York City, sent me a letter stating that the copper network in Hunters Point, Long
Island City will no longer be available after April 22nd, 2019.
My services will be suspended if I don't set up an appointment to transfer to Fios by June
2019.
I set up a June appointment to avoid termination of service.
Prior to this, I had been able to maintain my setup for a year by calling Verizon Network
Management and getting my name onto a refused migration list.
A refused migration list.
Sounds like something Trump would make, but no, it's a totally different meaning.
I was unable to do so this time because they said my central office was shifting to Fios.
I called the PSC, Public Service Commission, to file a complaint, but they did so reluctantly,
informing me that the FCC approved the migration from copper to Fios.
I contacted the Attorney General's office today for their input and help regarding getting
Verizon to honor the copper network settlement and respect our right to choose DSL and copper.
I am waiting for a response.
Please help us and other New York residents maintain our copper-wired landlines and DSL,
signed Adele.
Thank you, Adele, for that wonderful letter.
Unfortunately, it looks like that is where we are going, getting rid of copper, which
I think is a mistake.
I think it's a mistake to completely cut off from the old technology and just embrace the
new, which has its faults, has its shortcomings.
We have outlined them repeatedly on this program, and when you lose power, oftentimes you lose
your phone very soon afterwards with the new technology, not so with the old technology.
There's all kinds of other issues that make one preferable over the other, but why not
have both?
Yeah, and this is one of those issues that, if you're not familiar with this, if it doesn't
affect you, you might think, oh, what's the harm in just switching everything over?
But we on this program have heard by email and by phone calls to the station from multiple
people who are affected by this, who either can't upgrade or they're older people who
don't want to upgrade to something that they don't fully understand, or they're people
in areas that can't upgrade because the infrastructure just isn't there wherever they are.
It's a real problem that affects real people.
Yeah, and in particular, this person has mentioned DSL, and some people aren't happy with a lot
of the broadband plans out there.
They don't want to use wireless or Wi-Fi or any of the cellular modems or models, and
they don't necessarily want to jump to a Fios or another broadband.
They're happy with a couple megs that they get through DSL, and when you start moving
to these other plans, their base bottom plan for a couple megs is like 50, and so you end
up paying a premium for data that some users, they're not necessarily Luddites, they're
not elderly, although they have their own affection for the landline in and of themselves,
but maybe someone who doesn't really need all of that bandwidth and is happy with paying
a reasonable amount for their broadband because it's just enough to get online to do the basic
things that they need to do.
They're completely engaged and online and interested in technology, but they don't want
to be robbed.
They don't want to be paying for all of this excess capacity that personally they don't
necessarily have a use for.
Also, the complete argument around infrastructure has changed because there aren't really telephone
companies anymore.
The telephone service is now something that you get bundled in if you get the right cable
TV service or digital television subscriptions, and switching to something like that then
opens you up to having to pay for TV you don't watch or getting pressured to throw more things
in on your deal.
There are no providers right now whose job it is to just make sure you can use the telephone.
Yeah, this is the broader issue of consolidation in media, but also the consumer protections,
the fact that it isn't regulated in the way that a utility of years past was.
The private entities, the cellular companies themselves are not at all looked at in the
way a public switch telephone network operator would have been.
You had to be able to get a phone line.
That is how it worked.
No matter how far away you were from a city, no matter how remote your house was, you were
guaranteed to have a phone.
It was a utility.
You don't get those kind of guarantees with a cell phone.
That's for damn sure, and you certainly don't get the same kind of quality.
To expect people to just give up those guarantees of the past and move into something that has
its advantages, but it also has its shortcomings, and just embrace all that and accept it without
any kind of feedback.
That is a big mistake, and we are constantly pointing that out in various forums.
It's a real loss to people, and I think this is encapsulated in the Digest page really
quite well, because having access to the telephone network, especially in the 80s and the 90s,
allowed you access to this worldwide network that you could begin to explore.
For a lot of hackers and phone freaks back in the day, when you're going back to Red
Boxing, this was part of our upbringing.
This was part of what made us the lunatics that we are today.
Still doing a radio show, like some of us doing a radio show every week for 31 years.
Who can imagine such craziness going on?
But it really was such a form of access to something that was so worldwide, way before
the internet, and the importance of that can't be underestimated, and it really comes
through in the pages, not only of the Digest, but of every single issue that you're going
to get if you pledge $100 and call 516-620-3602, support off the hook.
Interestingly enough, by the way, we were talking about Red Boxing, and I was just pinged
by an old friend of mine and a current listener right now who asked me a question about whether
the statute of limitations has run on Red Boxing, and the answer, my good friend, is
yes, it certainly has.
It would probably be a six-year statute of limitations.
Plus, the companies don't exist anymore, most of them.
Well, yeah.
Well, they're in one form or another, they're still there.
I mean, remember, there was New York Telephone, then it was 9X, then it was Bell Atlantic,
then it was Verizon, then we had Verizon Really Sucks and VerizonEatsPoop.com, and Verizon
should spend more time fixing its networks and less money on Lawyers.com.
I don't know how you remember all these, but yes.
Because yeah, we used to operate them, right, way back in the day, a product of my misspent
youth.
But getting access to the telephone company, to go back to another Red Box story, I remember
I was probably 15 years old, it might have been like 1994, I skateboarded up to a shopping
center on Long Island.
You were trouble.
I was trouble.
I mean, you were.
I was trouble.
I was certainly trouble.
I mean, nothing's changed.
I've gone from bad to worse.
I became a lawyer.
So in any event, I Red Boxed a phone call.
You're still trouble, actually.
Yes.
Yeah, that's true.
That's a good point.
I just realized that.
That is still a good point.
The best lawyers are, I have to say.
They're still trouble.
But I Red Boxed a call to one of my favorite authors at the time, who was Bruce Sterling.
I tracked him down to where he lived in Austin, Texas, and I called him on Thanksgiving Day
using a Red Box.
He must have been thrilled.
He was thrilled, as a matter of fact.
Actually, we spent about two hours on the phone.
Okay.
Yeah.
You know, Bruce is an interesting person.
So okay, I could definitely see him.
And to this day, we're still in contact.
We've never actually met in real life, but it was using the telephone system and a Red
Box that allowed me to make that connection.
Rob, you wanted to say something.
Oh, yeah.
I want the listeners to hear something, and then I'll explain what it is.
You're not going to Red Box over the air, are you?
Not as such, no.
But that's me with something I pulled out of my wallet, which I've been carrying around
for very many years.
This is my last 6.5536 crystal from the Red Boxing days.
And that wasn't his head he was hitting.
You have that in your wallet?
I have it in my wallet.
Why do you have that in your wallet?
The posts on the crystal are long since broken away.
Most of the print is rubbed off the casing of this thing.
But I keep it around as a reminder of those fun old days spent phone freaking and doing
things that I maybe wasn't expected to with bits of technology.
I still have a three and a half inch floppy that I carry with me.
So I guess I could understand that.
I need to get something off of it, though.
That's why I'm carrying it around.
That could be misinterpreted.
Be careful.
I think the spirit is definitely, it's still there.
And then what Alex had said that made me think of, you know, why are we doing this?
Why do we continue to talk about these things?
And I think it's really about creating understanding because the curiosity that came from the 80s
and the 90s, it's across the board.
It's still there.
But people may not be aware of the historical significance of things like the crystal involved
in the Red Boxes or some of these other infrastructure or tech related areas.
And by continuing to talk about it and ask questions, I think we create understanding
and we ask more questions about what we're presented with today.
And the more people that are interested, the more people that get curious, that ask questions
themselves, that are listening and trying to understand the things around them that
seem so ubiquitous and so mysterious, I think that the better off we are as a society because
people are then equipped to not be at the mercy of these tools and technologies, but
rather they can master them.
They can know what is going on and how it is being wielded or not, or how they themselves
can wield it and really be better for it.
And the more people that understand that, and I think that's the real importance of
broadcasting at WBAI, is that a lot of people can hear it.
A lot of people, they may not know exactly what we're talking about, but they can always
go and search nowadays.
They can find out more.
They can just read one of these issues and get really interested in something historical
and then imagine for themselves what's going on today, what replaced that, and go down
their own rabbit holes of curiosity.
And I think that's the real benefit that we provide by doing the show and offering information
like this.
I think you hit the nail on the head there because a lot of people over the years have
said, yeah, I love the magazine, but I don't understand most of it.
And what I think a lot of people don't realize is that nobody understands all of it.
We don't understand everything.
People who write things might not understand a different article.
The important thing is to be accessible, to be able to speak to people in terms that they
get the general idea.
And I think that's what we try to do with the magazine.
We try to do that with the radio show.
We try to do that with the conferences.
I think that is how you bridge the gaps in technology.
Yes, Alex.
You know, to build on everything that you are saying, Kyle's saying, Rob's saying, about
the historical nature of all this and its significance, to take it one step further,
I think there's also so many parallels with what's happening today when you look back
in these historical pages.
And I want to read something from volume three of the Digest.
Volume three?
Which was 1986.
1986, okay.
This is from the Digest.
Surveillance and the NSA were hot topics in our pages.
1986.
With concern being expressed as to what the secretive agency might actually be up to.
The abuse of metadata by the authorities in the form of warrantless pen register info
was another hot topic.
We noted with interest and suspicion the NSA's attempts to get rid of the data encryption
standard algorithm DES and replace it with something of their own.
We saw the first use of electronic fingerprints and how they could be used to hunt people
down nationwide.
Something that had been previously inconceivable.
What foreshadowing, let me say.
1986.
Wow.
That's just a taste of the kinds of things that you'll see that spelled out the future
and that might spell out the future even today with more current issues.
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I'm sorry.
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We're here on the radio and a lot of people don't think about radio the way they used
to in the past as a medium, basically.
People in general might think, oh, things are going toward everything digital, everything
online.
But if you think about it, phones in this country are now pretty much digital.
There's no analog left.
Television in this country is digital.
There's no analog left.
I think we might be the one mass medium that's still around that's broadcasting on the analog
bands and in a way that you could turn on a radio that your grandparents had generations
ago and listen to us on it.
Any radio that they make in the future, you could listen to the same airwaves as we're
pulsing away in times past.
This is a bit of old infrastructure that exists and that is still so vital to so many people.
There are people who listen to us on the airwaves who don't have access to anything digital.
We have to keep that going and we've been kept going for, what, 60 years almost now?
It's more than 60 years, right?
No, it's almost 60 years.
You're right.
Yeah.
59 years this year.
The radio station, 1960 is when it went on.
Yeah.
We started in 1960.
As I said, the only thing that's kept us going is you, the listener.
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So go to give2wbai.org or call 516-620-3602 and keep us doing what we're doing.
So what do you guys think about this?
A bill sponsored by Brooklyn Assemblyman Felix Ortez prohibits pedestrians from crossing
the road at any point while using any portable electronic device.
A fine for doing so would be from $25 to $50 for a first offense, up to $100 for a second
offense and $250 for a third offense within 18 months.
Exceptions include texting the police, fire department, hospital, or a physician's office
or a health clinic.
The text of the law states that using means viewing, so presumably people would still
be able to talk on the phone while they cross the street.
Now that bill died in the Assembly last year, but this year, Queens State Senator John Liu
has adopted it into the Senate.
I've gotten more than my share of complaints from constituents about the problem and the
suggestion that there ought to be a law, including from parents who don't want their kids texting
while they're walking, much less while they're crossing the street.
I don't know, Alex, as our resident lawyer, what do you think about this?
I mean, look, it's certainly a problem and I think that we're all guilty of the vices
that we preach against to, you know, go back to the Parson's Tale and the Canterbury Tales.
But in any event, I think that, look, it's a big problem, but I don't necessarily think
the answer is legislation here.
Because of these exceptions, it's going to be very, very difficult to enforce.
People are going to be really angry about it.
If you get a ticket, it's going to be, you know, you're going to be, you know, angry
about this, you know, to...
It just seems like it is designed to generate additional tax revenue for the city in a very
selective manner.
It will probably be enforced selectively, probably against minorities and not necessarily
in Manhattan.
I can imagine more tickets being issued in the Bronx and Washington Heights and all these
places where there's already selective enforcement of the criminal laws.
And so, I also see it as somewhat problematic because we don't necessarily need a legislative
solution to something that just requires common sense.
Yeah.
How do you make common sense become something cool again?
Common?
Something common?
Yeah.
Something that people want to do.
Well, I think we should just, you know, shun people that do idiotic things like walk across
the street while they're texting or give somebody a...
Shun people?
How do we, as a society, shun people?
You could give someone a bad look.
You don't necessarily need to issue them a ticket.
I give people bad looks by default.
That doesn't work.
Well, you know, it's because I've been dealing with it for 25 years.
So it's like, you know, I've become immune to it.
It's like I've got a vaccine.
Exactly.
As will everybody else.
So...
Well, sure.
Of course.
I guess, you know.
But look, on the other hand, if it discourages people from doing it, maybe it'll save a life.
Right?
I mean, who knows?
But my problem with this is it seems very paternalistic.
It seems like the state reaching into our private lives yet again and trying to control
our actions.
And we should be able to correct that ourselves.
We don't need a legislature to tell us what to do on something that basic and that simple
and that commonsensical.
I think the manufacturers and the carriers could have a little bit more activity here.
And they're already talking about some of this stuff, like having limitations, especially
for young students and people that may be getting consumed by all this stuff.
But how hard would it be to make it so that if a phone is moving, you can detect someone
walking to make it so it's harder to look at a screen while moving?
I mean, there's simple little things like that that could be a part of the user interface.
But this is only for crossing a street, right?
Not for walking and texting.
You can still do that on a sidewalk or pacing around your backyard or something.
Again, maps.
I mean, there's so much already on that sensor-wise and in the device.
But that's just one idea.
My main question when you mention this, though, is where will that revenue go?
What exactly is that going to fund?
Is that going to fund better markings or maybe some signage to remind people that it's a
bad idea to be looking down?
Not that common sense shouldn't play a part, but things like that.
Or is it just kind of a blanket way to just get more revenue?
And I also agree.
I think it'd be misapplied wholesale.
Just another way to target people and just like broken taillight kind of situations.
How about people on bikes texting?
Can we do something about that?
It just annoys me when I see it because you really need to be paying attention on a bike.
You really do.
You can't be texting.
You can't be doing that.
I mean, I appreciate that people have the skill to do that.
But it just takes a second, a single stone, a single pothole.
And these are people that are on city bikes with no helmets, with headphones and texting
at the same time.
I mean, it drives me crazy as somebody who cycles all the time to see this happening.
But to go back to Kyle's point, where's the revenue going to go?
We also have to remember, even if this does generate a significant amount of revenue,
there's also going to be a cost to the city for enforcing it and then dealing with the
legal system as well, because these tickets are going to be contested.
With the amount of exceptions that they're planning on building into this, there's going
to be plenty of people trying to wiggle out of these tickets, and that's going to take
a toll on the legal system itself.
It could potentially overburden an already overburdened criminal justice system with
these idiotic violations.
I would go further.
I mean, I agree with the texting on a bicycle is wholly dangerous, and just it's a really
bad idea on any road.
If you're bicycling, you should focus on your bicycle ride and enjoy the bicycle ride.
How I would go further would be headphones.
I think people with earbuds in while they're cycling, I know you're exercising or whatever,
and it gets you in the zone and all that, but it's incredibly dangerous, especially
if you're commuting and you're on roads.
You should be able to hear cars coming up behind you.
You should have all of your, as many of your sensory organs focused on the environment
so that you have situational awareness and you can dive out of the way and protect yourself
and others.
So instead of saying this is a bad idea, we're coming up with all kinds of other examples
of how people should be penalized.
They're already illegal in driving.
Like you can't have earbuds in while you drive, why on a bicycle?
You can't text while you drive either.
You can't even talk on the phone with a handheld device.
But I don't know, I hear the point of maybe legally isn't the way to go about it.
Maybe some way of technologically addressing the issue, but also just getting people to
want to do something that is smart and common sense.
Yeah, kind of with what Alex was saying about shunning.
I mean, maybe not shunning, that's a bit aggressive, but I think definitely behaviorally we should
look-
I don't think we shun enough, but okay.
Well, but I just want to say we should look inward.
We should have some introspection in our social, broader social behaviors, what's acceptable
and what isn't.
I think things eventually, they fall out of fashion.
People realize when they go into a meeting they should probably put their phone in silent.
These things in movie theaters, all these things become conditioned over time, and we
just really need to keep the discussion going and be aware.
I came up with an idea.
Cell phone jammers at all intersections, all right?
I'm in favor.
Solves so many problems.
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Have a good night.
We can always get along.
But everyone says it's a surprise to me.
We are so nice around.
But you wouldn't understand you only deal with men.
Hi, this is David Amram.
You're listening to WBAI New York, 99.5 on your FM dial, and keep on listening.
Have a good night.