Calling Dick Tracy

You go to your bank to make a deposit. The newly renovated drive-through is 30 feet from the glass window the tellers are seated behind. The small speaker comes to life- “Hi”. You respond, wondering if you’re being heard. You stick the deposit in a plastic tube, position it inside a tube launcher, and press SEND. The electronic door closes slowly and there’s a blast of air that carries your transaction to the teller. You wait. When the deposit slip arrives back, you assume the muffled sound you hear is a “thank you”…

You walk into Dunkin’ Donuts and stand patiently at the register. An employee wearing the familiar brown and orange walks by and says “Can I help you?” You respond with “ I’ll have a large regular with two sugars and a …” but before you can finish you notice the employee is not talking to you, but talking into a headset and helping someone in the drive-through. You feel stupid, embarrassed, and powerless…

You’re in a line at the movies and see someone you know. They say “Hi, what’s up?” You begin to respond, but they spin around, continuing their conversation into their cell phone. It’s awkward and humiliating…

You pick up your son or daughter from school, excited to hear about their day. As they approach the car you see their right arm is slightly bent and tilted down at their side, hand at their hip, fingers busy, they almost bump into the car door. They smile, but not at you. They’re text messaging a friend who might only be 25 feet away…

Welcome to the “New World”! It’s an impersonal place not dependent on actual human interaction for its survival or its kicks…

For those of us old enough to remember, there was the radio character (1934), comic strip (1947), and cartoon character (1960), who was a plainclothes police detective named Dick Tracy. The cartoon animation I remember was bland, straight line stuff, but the unusual technology was amusing. Tracy wore a wide brimmed, yellow fedora hat and matching trench coat, had thick eyebrows, sharp facial features, and narrow blacked-out eyes.

Created by cartoonist Chester Gould and appearing as a comic strip in The Detroit Mirror in 1931, Dick Tracy was the first to introduce raw violence to comic strips, reflecting the violence of Chicago during the 1930’s. The villains were based on real-life gangsters.

It was in 1946 that inventor Al Gross aided Gould, who didn't retire until 1977, with the introduction of the two-way wrist radio Tracy would use to communicate. A character named “Diet Smith”, an eccentric industrialist, developed most of the futuristic equipment, but it was Smith’s blind son, “Brilliant”, who invented the wrist radio. In 1964, the wrist radio became a wrist TV, and then during the late ‘60’s, in keeping with the times, Gould equipped Tracy with atomic-powered gadgets and a spacecraft with a magnetic propulsion system.

Over the years, Tracy confronted the criminally insane “Selbert Depool”, freelance hitman/ infamous enemy “Flattop Jones” and his revenge-seeking, psychopathic daughter “Angeltop”, fugitive “Crewy Lou”, and Al “Big Boy” Caprice, a revenge-seeking gangster based on Al Capone. Other seedy characters included "Itchy Oliver", "Mumbles", "Pruneface", and "Littleface Finney". The character “Mr. Intro” never appeared except as a disembodied voice seeking world domination. Tracy annihilated Intro using an atomic laser.

Fast forward to 2009… A lot of Chester Gould’s visions have become harsh realities. The cell phone may have evolved from Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio and web-cams from Tracy’s wrist TV. Text messaging has taken communication one step further into the obsessive and impersonal. People 15-35 rely totally on the text message for their communication. There is no live voice, only a short script, but none-the-less texting is the communication of choice for this demographic.

Texting has become a real addiction for some teens who are unable to go as long as 15 minutes without a text message fix. They’re good at it too. They can do it riding a bike, inside their pockets during school, even while driving a car. They use it to cheat on tests, spread gossip; even break-ups have been reduced to words on a small, pocket-sized screen.

Is texting a problem? Certainly in areas where other forms of communication are not available, text messaging can be very useful. But for young adults who live to communicate minute to minute, unknowingly, they are living in a distraction and missing out on life around them. They are totally absorbed in the craze and the addiction is as consuming as nicotine, alcohol, or drugs.

Unfortunately, text messaging cost as little as ten dollars a month for unlimited usage and that has helped make it as popular as it is. At schools, where cell phone use during school hours is not allowed, disciplinarians regularly confiscate cell phones and other electronic devices, but are unable to significantly reduce overall usage. Disciplining repeat offenders is time consuming, disruptive to the goals of education, and in the end, costs taxpayers money.                                                                                  

“Calling Dick Tracy! Calling Dick Tracy! There are disembodied voices everywhere!" Maybe Diet Smith has the answer to reducing cell phone use and text messaging. I hope he knows that using atomic lasers would get him in a lot of trouble…