Curiosity ~ Lucidity ~ Humanity
Not a morning person, Miranda, clad in her bathrobe, lumbered into the kitchen at 6:40 in the morning and was startled to encounter an unfamiliar man all-too-familiarly making coffee with her De’Longhi espresso machine.
“Good morning!” he said effusively as if he was greeting an office mate.
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?” Miranda said, less than civilly. If she had had her phone in hand she would have been calling 911; although after eying him briefly she was more annoyed than frightened. He looked like one of the many ill-kempt athleisure wearing tech executives who populated her neighborhood.
“Oh. I’m here for a meeting with Paul,” he replied as if his presence in her home was perfectly normal. He did not introduce himself.
“Paul!!!” Miranda shouted for her husband.
As equally and inappropriately cheerful as the interloper, like nothing was amiss, Paul strolled into the kitchen, helped himself to a cup of coffee, said “Thanks Bob,” and returned to his home office in another wing of the house.
Miranda had planned to spend much of the day, uninterrupted, at home grading midterms. So she made herself some coffee and planned to retreat and drink it in the privacy of her studio. While walking to her hoped-for-sanctuary, she encountered another unknown-to-her man striding down the hallway. She called out to him asking who he was.
“I’m Hans. I just got in from Germany for a meeting with Paul. He’s down the hall? Yes.” He seemed uninterested in who she was.
As she entered her office, Miranda encountered two more men engaged in a debate about data, data, and more data, and a graph that someone had scribbled on a white board which had been propped up on her pristine desk. They did not even look up as she slammed the door on her way back upstairs to her bedroom.
Her bedroom was mercifully free of Paul’s colleagues, so Miranda changed and decided to work outside on their patio. There she hoped, she could grade in peace.
On her way downstairs she bumped into another man, who simply said “excuse me” and moved on.
She fled to the garden and breathed. As she glanced at her home, it seemed as if it had transformed into a modern, Google-like workspace---steel, glass, and open spaces without proper walls or doors. Similarly clad men were buzzing about, walking purposefully up and down staircases, meeting in various areas, and comfortably helping themselves to coffee and snacks.
All boundaries were gone. The walls between home and office had disappeared. She’d have to have a serious talk with Paul about bringing his work home with him.
Sound carries. Waves ripple down streets and vibrate through windows permeating the walls of houses and floors. Signal-to-noise ratio explains why in quieter places with fewer background sounds, our brains process and prioritize the louder, isolated tones making them feel disruptive and jarring. Whereas in busier, more tumultuous environments, auditory masking and reduced signal-to-noise ratio helps us to tune out egregious sounds. This explains why in densely populated New York City, amidst the din of traffic, honking horns, sirens, yelling and talking, no one overhears your cell phone conversations; in spacious, quiet suburbia, they do.
The still suburban neighborhood, known as The City of the Tall Coastal Redwood and for its extensive urban forest, was briefly eclipsed by a cacophony of flapping wings and a pandemonium of parrots squawking. A flash of green flew overhead to another nesting place, followed by silence. It seemed that the parrots of urban San Francisco had migrated to suburban Palo Alto, settling themselves amidst the McMansions and older stately homes, heavily populated by People of the Phone.
Trying to mind my own business, while walking the dog, I overheard:
“We’ve secured Angel Investors and are working on some big VCs like Accel and Andreesen.” Snarky laughter. “Yeah. No wokeness here so Andreesen might. . . Yeah. Waiting for a response from his rep.”
“Tell Joe to make an offer to Chang. Yeah. He’s a pretty cracked engineer at FAANG. . . . Sweeten the deal.”
“We’re in stealth mode.”
When my dog Lola barked at every one of the three different tech bros, each solipsistically engaged in his phone monologue, armed with the latest Bluetooth or noise cancelling headphones, none noticed.
Even in the alleged privacy of my home, through closed doors and windows, I was often assaulted by the din of People of the Phone.
One summer, for weeks on end, every afternoon, during nap time, a biotech man, who lived around the corner from me, marked what he deemed his territory, by strolling his infant, pacing back and forth for forty minutes in front of my house, ostensibly to soothe the baby to sleep and stop his disruptive crying. Not wanting to waste precious work time on “parenting,” he “problem solved” by multitasking. Innovative bio-tech bro, sporting noise cancelling headphones to muffle the high-pitched wailing of his child, relocated his office, now mobile, before my home, where he spoke to co-workers and investors, all the while performing his paternal skills.
“We can downsize soon. AI will make it easy to cut costs and RIF NPCs.”
“We need POC before we have our next meeting with Third Rock.”
Sometimes biotech bro conducted his calls on Zoom, so he could neither hear nor see anyone around him and talk freely without being disturbed. But I caught every word. After he loudly declared to the disembodied voice on his phone that his start up was “disruptive,” I aptly opened my door yelling at him, “Shut up, shut up!” like a raving madwoman. Willfully oblivious, he did not even look my way.
That’s when I took out my phone to record him.
In community-minded Palo Alto, people share public sidewalks, and most houses are separated by a mere few feet. My next-door neighbor’s yard was partitioned by a seven-foot-tall wooden fence and, like all outdoor spaces---ether and of course---the ethernet. Sound carries particularly well through small gaps in a fence and wood’s low density. At nighttime, when there is little ambient noise, and cooler temperatures, sound waves bend downwards and travel farther.
One evening, after his children were asleep, or tended to by the nanny, my tech bro neighbor, a Palantir employee, hosted an outdoor work party during which a bunch of his colleagues spoke on their individual phones, and occasionally to one another, about private company matters. They were all talking simultaneously, though not necessarily in conversation with one another, creating a cacophony, like the Tower of Babel for the technology age. Instead of a tower of stone, the modern-day Babel is a cell tower. Like those in the biblical parable who were trying to reach the heavens, the tech bros too were displaying excessive hubris and playing god. Words, tech jargon, and phrases such as “Nvidia,” “ontology can make decisions,” “cheaper,” and “increase growth,” wafted across the redwood fence. Although they spoke the same language, they did not communicate with one another.
I recorded their “conversations” too. After all, Palantir’s mission is to manage and integrate secret data for defense department and the government and claims to protect privacy interests and protect sensitive information from misuse and abuse. My neighbors were airing private company secrets in public. I was just doing my civic duty. All in a day’s walk.
Bio-Fragment: Ariel Balter is a former academic and teacher who now writes satirical fiction. She's a New York City transplant with a biting sense of humor who has yet to adjust to northern California.