Joybubbles Has Placed His Last Call
Here in Boulder, Colorado, I spend part of my week working and volunteering for the Audio Information Network of Colorado. This is a state-wide non-profit company which serves the need of the blind, visually impaired, and print- handicapped of Colorado (that means unable to read print materials for reasons other than loss of vision) by broadcasting the reading aloud of local newspapers and other publications of interest.
In addition to volunteering my time reading the Friday Longmont Times-Call, a smattering of state-wide employment ads, and select New Age publications (not all for the same show), I’m one of the part-time staff. I send out specially tuned radios to listeners, I maintain the website, and I take care of random tasks that arise and call for the use of computer literacy, spare time, or eyes. I also tend the aging database that keeps track of listeners, volunteers, and generous donors.
Last week I found a sticky-note on my computer saying “Joybubbles passed away. Please inactivate.” I sighed. When the bulk of your subscribers are seniors, it’s not uncommon to receive this sort of news. It always makes me feel a little meta-melancholy: another human is gone from the world, one whom I was tangentially connected to, but I didn’t know them at all so I can’t properly mourn them. All I can do about it is update the listeners database table.
Status: Inactive. Date Service Canceled: 8-17-2007. Reason Canceled: Deceased.
Joybubbles’s name was familiar to me, but only in the context of this database. Every six months I print the labels that are used in mailing out program schedules; records lacking last names tend to stand out. But I had no idea who Joybubbles was, other than someone who would no longer be receiving the semiannual program schedule. Joybubbles had been in the database since before I took it over, had probably been a listener since before there was a database. Definitely since before the company started collecting demographic information; there was no date of birth or gender listed. Based on the name, I had a vague impression of a pleasantly eccentric elderly lady with a perpetually sweet smile.
And that’s all I knew, or thought I knew, until I got caught up on reading BoingBoing today.
Joybubbles (formerly Joe Engressia), often called the granddaddy of phone phreaking, died last week at 58.Blind since birth, Joybubbles amazed with his ability to make free telephone calls simply by whistling into a phone. He was one of the central characters in the seminal 1971 Esquire article on phone phreaking called “Secrets of the Little Blue Box.”
Multifaceted, he was as famous for his encyclopedic knowledge of the telephone system as he was for listening to all 800+ episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood when Fred Rogers passed away in 2003. And, he was a heckuva nice guy.
—BoingBoing reader Phil Lapsley, quoted Aug. 14 2007
He was a great American character, a Thomas Edison/Gyro Gearloose folkloric figure and someone who, despite his hardships was a truly wonderful personality. He and the phone phreak/hacker phenomenon spoke to the love/hate relationship America has with technology: we love what tech does for us, but we love the techno outlaws who know how to subvert it and show us humans are still the boss.
About 15 years ago Joe changed his name to “Joybubbles” and dedicated his life to the sensibility of five year olds. I wondered about that, but I realized it’s about play and how hackerdom preserves the spirit of play in an increasingly antiseptic, joyless, cyberworld.
Joe deserves credit for creating, with his phone phreaking, the first electronnic web; the world will miss a lovely spirit, but it’s a spirit that lives on in the World Wide Web.
—Ron Rosenbaum’s tribute, quoted Aug. 21, 2007
There’s more. Lot’s more. Follow the links and read the tributes; he was a fascinating, wonderful human being. And all this time, I knew no more than that he was a mysterious database record sans last name. I wish I had known to want to know him better while he was still around to know.
I’m glad I was right about the smile.