News From Fort Schuyler

December 3, 1999 - Volume 3, No. 55

IT'S A DIGITAL WORLD - The December 6^th "Digital Age" issue of the New Yorker magazine contains articles and cartoons relating to technology and the Internet. An article by Michael Specter, "Your Mail Has Vanished," provides an inside look at how email gets from sender to recipient. It also assays the impact of email, including this quote from IBM's David Singer, a participant in the development of email from the start: "E-mail is impoverished. It has flaws; there is no tone of voice with E-mail. No subtlety and certainly no privacy. E-mail is postcards, not letters. It's a CB radio. It's primitive and raw.......Yet the energy it has unleashed is hard to describe. It has already changed everything we do and changed it for good." (p.103) Your NFFS editor can only agree. NFFS, now more than two years and 124 issues old, would have never existed or even been considered, except for the invention of email. Which brings us to an interesting comparison, with a definite maritime flavor, between email and paper mail recently sent to NFFS.

MAIL VERSUS SIGNALS - The following Jeremiad was received from CAPT. C.S. "Stan" WETHERELL, Class of 1942, who took umbrage at the NFFS Editor's use of the term "snail mail" in a recent email posting requesting that alumni contact classmates without email via "snail mail" to inform them of the forthcoming Friends of the Library book signing event with Clive Cussler.

Capt. Wetherell writes: "This term is used by some to refer to mail, particularly letters, sent through our postal system versus information or signals sent electronically on the web and improperly called EMail. EMail is not mail, it is a signal. Mail is where something that you hold in your hand is sent, by whatever means, to another person, that person receiving the physical article you sent, be it a letter, package, whatever. A signal is where information is sent or transmitted by some other means, be it sound, light, flags, electronically, et cetera. To compare mail, the receipt of a material object, with a signal, information relayed by whatever means, is, as is often said, "Like comparing apples with oranges."'

"Signals were undoubtedly used before man ever thought of mail. The hand signal of a hunter to another hunter, the whistle to warn of danger, the drums to pass information, the smoke signal, on and on. As our lives got more complex better systems were developed, semaphore, flags and flag codes, flashing light, whistles, gun shots, and many more. Then with electricity came the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, telex, fax, on and on to what we now call EMail even though it it not mail. While much faster and often easier to use, they are all subject to error and change of the received information versus the sent information. Each new generation of signal sending equipment seems more capable of sending information without error, but none are infallible. There are times when mail can not be used and the only way to send information is by signal. The Maritime was and is very familiar with the necessity for and use of signals. None-the less, we are not yet able, as Star Wars is, to signal, send electronically, objects."

"The United States has a very good postal system. It is not perfect, but it serves its purpose and serves it well. If you have been in other countries you will find some postal systems that are very poor. Postal systems handle objects, mail, they do not signal messages and other information. Our postal system should not be spoken of derogatorily, as the first paragraph of your ESignal does, it should be properly recognized as one of the many institutions that serves us well."

[Ed. And here I thought that I was merely making a harmless analogy to the difference in speed between the sending and receipt of email versus regular mail ! That difference was the lead item in the first issue of NFFS for 1999: "ONE ISSUE AT A TIME - Sixty issues of News from Fort Schuyler were distributed in 1998 to a subscription list of over 700 alumni, staff and friends of SUNY Maritime College. It may be said, without too much exaggeration, that by mailing it electronically there was a saving of time (seconds vs. days) and money ($0 vs. $10,000+ in postage.)"

FINDING THE RIGHT WORD FOR NEW THINGS - Variant spellings of email, E-mail, Email, EMail, (and ESignal) are also accompanied by even newer variations of old words. According to JANE FITZPATRICK, Associate Librarian, a recent NPR program used the term e-address, although she prefers the more succinct and classical e-dress (not only because she made it up.)

USING THE WRONG WORD - A close reader of last week's issue of NFFS, Maritime College President, ADM DAVID C. BROWN, rightly points out that the Admiral's Ball will NOT be the "culminating" event of the 125^th Anniversary Year, since there are many other anniversary-related activities planned for the following months. According to the Admiral, the culmination will actually be on Sunday, December 10, 2000.

CLIVE' S COMING - The Luce Library will be hosting an appearance by best-selling author CLIVE CUSSLER on Tuesday, December 7. For details go to: http://www.sunymaritime.edu/LIBRARY.WEB/clive_page.htm