Love Story

This is a love story – sorta, kinda.  Hey, I’m branching out here!  But maybe not in exactly the way that you think.

 

The website motherboard.vice.com has a fascinating article on how text messages are encrypted and transmitted.  No, really, I’m serious:  It’s fascinating.  It’s called “The Route of A Text Message, a Love Story.”  Hence, the misleading title.  Sneaky, see?  You can read it all, here.  Or, read on if you dare.

 

A small word of warning:  When my son set up my website on his server, he gave me access to tools that tell me – among other things – who comes in the front door, how long they stay, and where they came from.  So I know exactly who, when, where, and how long people are visiting my site.  Also, I know which links they click while they’re inside.

 

Remember, in this case it’s just little old me.  But can you imagine how much Google or Microsoft or Apple knows about you and your habits?  I mean, I only know which version of which browser you’re using, and how many times you’ve visited my site before.  They probably know what you had for breakfast, and how long it took you to digest it.  Scary, that.

 

If you are as horrified by that last bit of information as I am, well… good.  We can run but we can’t hide.  Now, though, at least we all realize we’re being tracked.  If knowledge is power, then sometimes it’s profit too – but I digress.  Bottom line:  I know whether you clicked the link or not.  You been warned.

 

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Let’s get back to the Love Story, shall we?  The article about Internet text protocols was written by this guy:

 

Scott B. Weingart is an historian of science, a data scientist, and a librarian at Carnegie Mellon University. Find him on twitter @scott_bot. This article originally appeared on Weingart’s blog, the scottbot irregular.

 

For a techie, he’s a pretty good writer.  This may explain why he held my interest most of the way through a piece that includes snippets of Android code.  He also plumbs the depths of the 279-byte limit in SS7.  Not to mention, he uses the term “reverse nibble notation,” which has got to be my favorite technical term of all time.  Oh, he also includes a table with the complete GSM-7 character set.  Be still my beating heart!

 

Come to think of it, maybe this helps explain why the guy’s wife is sending him come-hither text messages around bedtime.  Listen, I’m no expert on love and marriage.  But anybody who can make stuff this dry sound positively lively has already got a decent head start on the rest of us.  Suffice it to say, this is not just your average bit-twiddler with a pocket-protector:  This dude’s got literary game.  I’ll leave it to his wife to critique him in the sack.  Hey, I can only do so much.

 

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Fact is, even spying with my son’s stealth tools, I have no earthly idea whether you plowed all the way through to the end of the Motherboard article or not.  Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates might know, but I don’t.  Then again, Jeff Bezos wasn’t smart enough to realize it was unwise sending nude selfies to a woman-not-his-wife.  Not even when, in the very near future, his soon-to-be-ex-wife will likely win a divorce settlement valued in the billions of dollars.  So, there’s that.

 

Full disclosure:  Around the time the  author of the Motherboard piece got to his bit about electromagnetic signals pinging off cell towers, I kind of tuned out there for a minute.  Oh, alright, I admit it:  I switched off completely. That’s the problem with technical information – or indeed, with any information.  That 279-byte limit in SS7?  It’s very much like what goes on inside our heads when reading a story like this one.   If you wanna get through to your audience, better do it in the first couple of paragraphs, otherwise they’ll fall asleep.  Well, without the nude selfies they will I guess.

 

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“All’s well that ends well.”  Probably not so true in real life – just ask Jeff Bezos – but I always like to throw that in near the end to give my readers the feeling that things are gonna be OK.  My secret data mining tools tell me that the only posts of mine that end up in wide circulation are ones with cartoons and puns.  Posts about esoteric details of Internet text protocols?  Not so much.  But lately I’ve noticed a few of my readers pinging off cell towers in Amsterdam and Helsinki.  I must say, this has me really intrigued.  Who the hell are these people?  And what are they doing reading my blog?  And maybe most important of all:  Did they click the link to read the Motherboard article?

 

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Last word goes to Scott Weingart, because he really IS a very entertaining writer.  Besides, I know for a FACT that literally NONE of you got all the way down to the end of his article, where the following appears:

 

My wife’s text wouldn’t have reached me had I not paid the phone bill on time.  Had there not been a small army of workers handling financial systems behind the scenes. Technicians keeping the phone towers in working order, which they reach via a network of roads partially subsidized by federal taxes collected from hundreds of millions of Americans across 50 states. Because so many transactions still occur via (snail) mail, if the U.S. postal system collapsed tomorrow, my phone service would falter.  Exploited factory workers in South America and Asia assembled parts in both our phones.  Exhausted programmers renting expensive Silicon Valley closets are as-you-read-this pushing out code ensuring our phones communicate without interruption…

So here I am, in the office late one Sunday night. “I love you,” my wife texted from the bedroom, before the message traversed 40 or so feet to my phone in a handful of seconds. I realize what it means.  It’s time to wish her goodnight, and perhaps wrap up this essay.  I tap away the last few words.  I’m now slightly more cognizant of the complex layering of miles, signals, years of history, and human sweat it took to keep my wife from having to shout down the stairs that it’s about damn time I come get some rest.

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There.  You’re welcome.  All that, and “exploited factory workers” too.  Along with “exhausted programmers renting expensive Silicon Valley closets,”  hoo boy.

 

Now go to bed.  Get some rest.

 

Tomorrow’s gonna be a big day, I can tell.

 

Because I’ve got all the tools. 

 

Yup, better believe it, Bunky.

 

You can run, but you can’t hide.