Colossus of Communication: A Cultural History of Technology in A.A. 1935–2025 (NAATW 2025)

Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability from the original caption file. Speaker names are standardized using first name and last initial where available. Timestamps are adjusted so this presentation begins at 0:00.

Presentation: Colossus of Communication: A Cultural History of Technology in A.A. 1935–2025. Presenter: Jackie B. From the NAATW 2025 Workshop, Cincinnati.

[0:01] Presenter Introduction

[0:01] Host: In welcoming Jackie B.

[0:20] Opening and Framing Communication in A.A.

[0:20] Jackie B.: Hi! Hi everyone, my name is Jackie. I am an alcoholic. Is the microphone close enough to me? Okay, we'll see how this goes, because I am short. Um, I'm wearing a very special shirt. It is Victorian ladies holding a camera as a selfie. So, I feel like that kind of is a good, uh. good luck shirt for this. So, um… I am an alcoholic, um, I serve Area 6 California Northern Coastal as the recording secretary. I am also a, um, 8th Tradition Special Worker for the San Francisco Marin Intergroup. Um, so, you know, I just… my brain likes a lot of stuff, and for a long time, I have been interested in A.A. history. I'm very nervous to do this because. There are certain places where I'm really comfortable talking about the history, and then for this, I don't think I worked this hard. I mean, I've written.

[1:17] Jackie B.: two-hour history plays that were easier for me to do than this. So, um, luckily there's a lot of people, like, people here who live through a really big part of this history, the later stuff, you know. But, um, so we'll be able to have help, especially as we reach Q&A. So, let's get started! This is gonna… Okay, so in 1960, Bill W. At the General Service Conference gave a talk. Um, about communication, and I thought it was a fitting way to start this workshop. At a time like this, before thinking about today or tomorrow, old-timers like Lois and me think about the past. I think the key word by which you might convey some little part of what happened might be the word communication. Then, when you think about it. A.A. is unique means of communication, and I think of all the topics that Bill W. Wrote about, I think, actually, the core theme.

[2:25] Jackie B.: was communication, like, across the board, um, and especially, uh, I recommend language of the heart as a way to get into it, as well as our great responsibility.

[2:36] A.A. as a Unique Means of Communication

[2:36] Jackie B.: And this is what he said. And later in that conference. Our lives have depended on communication, our unity. depends on communication. Our functioning depends on communication. And so, what is that? Those are our three legacies, right? The ways in which we recover. which saves the individual's life, our unity, how we stick together with groups. through our 12 traditions, and the way we function as a whole to carry the message, which is our third legacy of service. So, going through, like, some of the legacies and kind of, you know, thinking about communication is about a source and a sender and a receiver, right? And as someone pointed out to me, like, really, communication, it lives in the mind of the receiver. That's how you know if the communication's effective. So who are we trying to communicate with?

[3:28] Jackie B.: Especially around our first legacy. We're trying to reach an A.A. member, which is an alcoholic who has a desire to stop drinking. Perspective members. Um, in particular, and we're trying to share with them. Excuse me. Oh, I went backwards. We're trying to share with them, uh, the content of which, and those are all the different mediums in the way that we can carry and share these messages and the things that we're trying to carry in our communication. But essentially, in the first legacy, I believe that what we're carrying is an understanding of the problem and an understanding of the solution. Now, for our second legacy. Um, who are we carrying? What are we… who is the receiver? The A.A. groups.

[4:14] Jackie B.: Um, and what are we trying to pass on to them? We're trying to pass on to them how to live in harmony, so that they can survive, right? And we do that through passing on the traditions. But long before the traditions were published in 1946. Uh, you know, our general service office and Bill W. Was passing on the lessons and the trial and error lessons of our, uh, of experiences of how the groups could live in better harmony. And, you know, one of the things that you saw that, you know. I think the way a lot of this operates is through trust, right? The first legacy, our ability to communicate effectively with a newcomer, is our ability, when we share our stories, they can identify, and that's how they learn to trust us, that we actually have.

[4:55] Jackie B.: Understand the problem, have a solution. And likewise, through the group conscience, when the group conscience gets to make these decisions about how to interpret the traditions, it builds a trust, because it's not someone telling them what they should do. That traditions aren't rules, right? So the trust is really implicit in that. And then, in our third legacy of service, who are we trying to reach? I think it's two-fold, but, you know, the audience is professionals and the general public, and we're trying to tell them who we are, what we do, what we don't do, how to find us, as well as.

[5:29] Jackie B.: you know, in our third legacy of service, when we do our service, we try to reach AAs at the local level and also worldwide, and… often what we're trying to pass on is, uh, this concept of service, responsibility, participation, and of course, self-support. Okay, and trust is the basis of that as well. So, and maybe… I think someone has their sound on.

[5:56] Communication, Trust, and the Three Legacies

[5:56] Jackie B.: That's okay. I'm gonna keep going, but we'll… So, we're gonna talk about different kinds of communication, that's kind of how I organize this. Um, let's start with talking about one-to-one, right? Yay, technology! Let's talk about word of mouth! But I think, you know, the thing is, when Bill talked about communication, he always started with it, right? And in terms of… you know, uh… the… what is being conveyed and what we learned and how we learned to recover through all the mediums, that message doesn't change, as someone pointed out to me, right? The message stays the same, and then it's just a question of. how each meeting can help us effectively carry and adapt how… the ways in which we communicate, and to which audiences and which time periods, right?

[6:45] Jackie B.: But, you know, when we started out, um, this was, I believe, one of the first pieces of technology that we used in A.A. history, and it was when Ebbie Thatcher. Um, called Bill W, his old childhood friend, and this is how Bill W. Tells the story of that faithful meeting, and how it came to be in… oh, November 1934, and then… he went to towns in December. But he called me on the phone, Abby Thatcher. And they got into… and then he got into the subway, and that total cost was 10 cents. At the level of the telephone booth and the subway turnstile, spirituality and money began to mix. One without the other would have amounted to nothing at all. Right then and there, Ebbie established the principle that A.A. in action calls for the sacrifice of much time and a little bit of money.

[7:37] Jackie B.: first use of technology. But that conversation facilitated, right, that telephone call, brought them together to have that one-on-one communication over the kitchen table. This is the kitchen table, picture of it is, um, they moved it to stepping stones, and if you go to Stepping Stones, the historic home of Bill and Lois Wilson. Um, in upstate New York, you can sit at the kitchen table. And you can see it. And this is what Bill wrote about that special type of communication one. that exists in A.A. My sponsor sits across the kitchen table, on which there was no coffee. In those days, it was gin, and then the unique communication starts, one drunk talking to another. And speaking of one drunk talking to another, May 1935, the Mayflower Hotel, another. Telephone call, bringing together Bill W. And Dr. Bob.

[8:28] Jackie B.: And then, Dr. Bob made a phone call, that's Dr. Bob's phone, uh, and he called Akron City Hospital, and then 3 of them got together, and there we have the first group, Akron Group 1, was born. And these connections were all facilitated by a piece of communication technology. That was the telephone, but that message… so that is the point-to-point communication. The one-to-one communication of the telephone facilitating. the direct, uh, transmission of the message face-to-face. So, in 1937, Bill W, well, what happened is then Bill W. Returned to New York, and he started 12-stepping, um, some alcoholics at Towns Hospital, where he sobered up, and then a group built around him. Um, but… and by the end of 1935, uh, our fellowship had two groups, 18 members, approximately. A third group would not start until April 1939.

[9:25] Jackie B.: In late 1937, Bill W, um, came back to Akron, and there, two years later, they counted noses in Bob's kitchen. And they realized that at that time, they had so… 40 sober menis, sober members, many of which had over a year of sobriety. So they solve that wholesale recovery was possible, that they had a method that was. reproducible, that would work in Akron as well as New York, that it could be taught and transmitted. I am going to say that you could say that the 12 steps are a form of social technology. in which, you know, we are able to reproduce in a systematic way that spiritual experience. or that connection to something greater, um, that helps one achieve and maintain sobriety. So I kind of got very into the idea of the 12 steps as a form of technology itself.

[10:19] Jackie B.: Um, but then what Bill said about that meeting was, after they had their celebration, they had a sobering thought. Which was in 2 years of intensive work with the word-of-mouth method, their membership was 40. And there are still millions stumbling in the dark down this, you know, there were probably hundreds in Akron just down the street. And pass it on, Bill W. Wrote. We saw that word-of-mouth communication would not only be slow, but dangerous, because the recovery message. might soon be garbled and twisted beyond recognition. And see, you know, there's a saying, like, uh, the telephone game, right? I mean, it's appropriate, right, that literally they use the telephone to connect, and that one-to-one.

[11:02] Jackie B.: communication can be so intimate, but it also can create, like, a loss of… Um, the integrity of a message as it gets past one-to-one, so… And that's what they were worried about. And so, uh, one of the things they realized was, well, uh. They… he realized, clearly, our budding society and its message would have to be publicized. That's a scary word. And he said, could we carry the message to distant alcoholic? Could we grow rapidly and soundly? Okay, so now they are seeking a way to take this message, to allow it to transfer. in far distances. Um, and to spread and to scale. Which was something I learned, a word I learned by listening to one of the recordings from the.

[11:55] Jackie B.: Uh, from this, um. workshop. So, in terms of one-to-one word-of-mouth communication, right, um, there's this great… I read this wonderful book by an author named Dana Boyd, and she talks about, um, and explains how an affordance, technology has an affordance, and it's, uh, affords, and it's a feature. of that technology that shapes how people can use it, and what kinds of communication it can make easy or difficult.

[12:24] One-to-One Communication: Word of Mouth and Telecommunications

[12:24] Jackie B.: So, when we're talking about one-to-one, whether word of… whether it's word of mouth, face-to-face, or word of mouth through the telephone. Um, the affordance that we're dealing with, the telephone affords. and immediacy and intimacy, and a participation, and that's a big one, right? It's very active, and both parties can go back and forth. But it's got a very small reach. Um, it's very slow to scale, as we saw in Akron, that, you know, and in New York at 2 years, 40 alcoholics, and it's ephemeral, right? And it's easy to also garble, right? It's easy to get twisted, what that message is.

[13:04] One-to-Many Communication: Print Media and the Press

[13:04] Jackie B.: So, one-to-many. One-to-many communication. And we're gonna talk about print media and the press, the move from word of mouth, one-to-one. to print, representing the first move into mass communication. in our fellowship. So, after counting noses, Bill and Bob settled on the idea of a book of experience where they could share their methods and results. There was a couple other things, like hospitals and paid missionaries, but, you know, that's a story for another time. It's a good story, but it didn't pan out, but the book did pan out. you know, spoiler alert, there's a book. Uh, the group voted. They brought it to the group conscience of Akron, and there was a vote, and by a very narrow margin, uh, the plan to write a book passed. And that need to write a book brought in the need to have.

[13:53] Jackie B.: Special workers, who at the time was not getting paid. our lovely, uh, Ruth Hawk, our National Secretary, that is the typewriter in which the manuscript of the book was, um. of, uh, bill dictated to Ruth. And then it also required financing, you know, as well, and that's the foundation of the Alcoholic Foundation. All came from, um, the Alcoholic Foundation, which was the predecessor to the General Service. Board of Trustees. So our whole world service structure built on that faithful decision to. produce a book. And the decision in September 1938 is we're gonna not only write a book, we're gonna self-publish it, we're gonna distribute it, we're gonna tackle all that so that we own that sake… you know, so that it really… the message is contained and stays within the fellowship.

[14:41] Jackie B.: Right? Even if it's in that body of that book, right? The control of that medium. They wanted to keep within the fellowship. Um, and that's a very faithful decision as well. And I think a lot of when we talk about general service. You know, and when you talk about technology, one of the concepts that was really interesting was this idea of, you know, like, inertia and technology… technological inertia, and how a society makes certain decisions about certain tools it's going to use, and it builds an infrastructure around those tools, and then it gets expensive and difficult to try. and move away and build a new infrastructure. And I think, to some degree, now, it's not like, and I, as I had some wonderful conversations yesterday, everything we're going to talk about, as we know, the book did not replace word of mouth.

[15:28] Jackie B.: Right? The telephone stayed a really important medium of connection and communication, uh, to this day, right? The type of phone, and whether or not you can leave messages and. text and do all that changed, right? But still, the use of that technology, that medium, as a part of our communication in A.A. stayed. And likewise, we're going to see that even though we built some of this really important infrastructure around the decision to produce our own book and to self-publish. It doesn't, you know, mean that later… uses of mediums, um, uh, will replace print. What it means is that print was… is a difficult thing for us. to move away from, and I don't think we should move away from it entirely, but that infrastructure that was built, and I think it got built starting right in 1938.

[16:15] Jackie B.: Okay, so that was one of my tangents. Um, and the book came out in April of 1939. There were 4,730 copies printed, um, and that cost is about $57 in today's. dollars, so approximately $57. to buy the book. So, when you are concerned about the price of the book, just remember, it's not $57. Um, and uh, you know, the reason why it's called a big book is because the paper was really big and thick, because they got a good deal on it. But they also wanted a legitimacy, right? And print gives really good legitimacy as well, right? So they kind of knew, like, we want to have a really. big book, we want people… we want to be taken seriously, and… and that's a part of what print did, especially in that time. You know, it was not easy to.

[17:07] Jackie B.: to get a book published, right? I mean, they were the big four publishing houses, and it was a wild idea to self-publish, right? I mean, on a small scale, you could do it, but… Anyway, um… So, there's the book, and so the book wasn't selling. I mean, literally… and Bill and Lois… That same month that the book is just sitting in a warehouse, because it's like, how are we gonna distribute it? They were planning to distribute it one book at a time, mailing it. from, you know, the Hanks office in New Jersey. Um, Hank was Bill's, um, sponsee, and he was very important in the whole, um, creation of the book, and… And the decision to self-publish. Um, Bill and Lois actually got kicked out of their… their home.

[17:53] Jackie B.: And became homeless for 2 years. Almost the same, like, week, practically, that the book got published, right? And then… They had no way to move it. And, you know, they, um, there were some little moments, so I'll talk about the radio moment, but everything really started to change in 1939, when we had these really important moments of, um, early magazine and press coverage. So, right, magazine… really big part of the readership of, especially of different class levels in… at this time, and then the newspapers. Which also, a lot of legitimacy. But these… the… the interesting thing is that it was the Cleveland plane dealer that really… and those series of articles that really made A.A. spread. But it happened, like, at this local level in Cleveland.

[18:38] Jackie B.: Um, but it was enough of a surge of membership, and people started ordering the book. And the Liberty magazine certainly helped. But, um, I actually think it was that… and so, again, local PI. Local public information is so vital. You know, we can't expect that the office's public information is going to be able to do all this work, and I think, like, even though the Saturday Evening Post article was really important, which I think is my next slide, no, it's not. Uh, it's coming up, there it goes. There we go, Saturday Evening Post. Even though that's really important, like, would the post have become interested in it without the growing interest that was happening at local public… local newspapers and the spread of it. Um, I mean, there was also, like, some personal connections as well with the Saturday Evening Post.

[19:26] Jackie B.: Um, but this picture I had is a part of what happened when the book was published. There was an office. They had a place… a place where you would mail. to get the book, and that became, like, The Office. So there had to be someone to answer the mail, and then they had phones, they had to answer the phones, and type up letters, and then as. Um, this article came, and coordinate national public relations, this being the very. big one. The Saturday Evening Post had a readership of 3 million. At this time, in 1941. And again, this was because it was a magazine, it not only… but not only a national publication, but a national magazine. It had a readership that was really, like, a lot of demographics. They were able to hit a lot of demographics.

[20:08] Jackie B.: At once, um, and that was the power of the magazine. And it was, um, because of the work that the office did with Jack Alexander, they had a glowing. article, but they refused to publish it without showing people's faces. And so, 1941, you can see Bill's face is there. But as a result of that article, the office membership in A.A. surged in one year from, uh, 2,000 to over 8,000. Um, and then within that first month, they got about 6,000, um, pleas for help. letters, and they were, like, responding to letters one by one, um, and so they needed to expand, and so because of that relationship with the press. And this is something I spent a lot of time thinking about as someone who works in a central office. We can do all this outreach.

[20:56] Jackie B.: to get the word out. But if our service centers do not have the staff and the resources to actually respond to when people reach out to us, then that outreach can actually be more harmful, right? So you have to have both. You have to, you know, make sure that you're supporting the service centers, the intergroups, the G.S.O., and then also then making sure that when you put out the word that A.A. is there. That's why it was so wise that they had the office, because they were actually ready. Um, for when all this interest came. Um, here's another little example of. coverage in newspapers. This is 1943 from my hometown. Uh, so you can tell, uh, these things called the traditions weren't quite there yet, um, and.

[21:42] Jackie B.: And A.A. was kind of like, I don't know how that happened, whether they got his picture or the whole story, I would love to know more about it, but… Um, I, you know, I will say mimeographs. As a piece of print technology, I think the mimeograph is, like, one of the most important, right? Because. Xerox was not… copies were not… this was how you did it, right? This is how you could produce pamphlets and directories, um, and the San Francisco Marin Inner Group had a mimeograph machine for our local newsletter up until. 2005? I don't know, 8? I think it was there when I first got sober in 2006. So, mimeograph stayed for a really long time, because it was a very affordable way to produce.

[22:28] Jackie B.: copies, right, and produce print materials. And so, um, but service centers started to open locally, and, you know, basically the fun story is, if you had a telephone. and a typewriter, and probably you were a woman, then you got to be a central office. And so, one of our first central offices was, uh, in… Chicago, and Sylvia Kaye, who wrote Kays of the Kingdom, she, uh, was a very wealthy debupon, and she just happened to have, like, extra, you know, an extra apartment. In her building she lived, and she had a secretary named Grace Cultis, who was a non-alcoholic, and so she had Grace. start answering the phones and typing up the schedules, and Grace was very beloved. Um, but… Um, there are so many examples of central offices literally starting because of a typewriter. And it's someone who knew how to type, which were women.

[23:24] Jackie B.: And the things that they produced were group records and meeting directories. And throughout the course of the history of technology in A.A. at the local and at the world service level. Dealing with group records. And I know this conference has dealt with, like, registration and the problem of group records and communicating with the groups and all of that. Group records were a nightmare. I imagine from the very beginning, because even when there weren't a lot of groups, there was even less people at the office. And then… and there was… one of my favorite quotes from a special worker was Bobby. be our second national secretary, who's, like, my hero, and she said, every time we add more staff and space, the workload just seems to grow more, so that we're still as busy as we were before.

[24:11] Jackie B.: And they didn't want to add… space, and they didn't want to hire more people. It was very… it was a lot of, like, you know, and this is when the group started, like, you know, sending in money so that they could afford to increase in space and afford. and afford to do this because people were answering, um. needed to answer the mail and send out the book, right? Service newsletters were also a really important thing that things publish. When we talk about communicating with the fellowship, right? Um, you know, we start out with the, uh, the bulletin, which is the one on the left. Later, then we got the A.A. Exchange Bulletin, and then Box 459 in the 60s. And then 1944, the A.A. Grapevine came out. Um, in June 1945, there were 1,200 copies printed, probably on a mimeograph.

[25:00] Jackie B.: It was put together in an apartment with 6 New York members. It was really thought of as being a local newsletter, like the other local newsletters that existed. But very quickly, it became our meeting in print. It was also something that got sent, right, across to the people, uh, the servicemen serving overseas, right? And that was a big part of it, too, this realization is we have to support and be able to. you know, transmit our stories to, um, members who are abroad. And we can do that with print, right? Because that was the way to do it, so they needed something lightweight that was easy to mail and things like that. And so the Grapevine also served that purpose. The Cleveland Central Bulletin was a local paper, and they also kind of.

[25:48] Jackie B.: We're very involved in supporting, um, the members who were abroad as well. This is the empty jug from Chattanooga, and it has a lot to do with our story of anonymity. Because, um, as more and more local newsletters started to be produced through things like mimeographs and print, you know, we always talk about, like, A.A.’s rich oral storytelling and oral tradition, but the truth is, A.A. also had a very rich. print culture. Um, and especially at the local level, and all the little, like, 24-hour book, and the little red book, a lot of these things started in groups, right, and became… and then. the different intergroups started sharing them, and then, you know, um, when the conference.

[26:31] Jackie B.: came together and created conference-approved literature. Um, this idea, a lot of the people wanted their stuff to be published by A.A. World Services. Unfortunately, they said, we can't be that kind of a publishing house. So we're not going to publish anything except for what Bill. uh… bill rights. That was kind of the decision at the time. And that's when a place like Hazelden kind of came in. pick up the 24-hour book and kind of establish that. other arm of the A.A. literature movement. Um, but anyway, so the guy who wrote the empty jug, he used to write these tirades against the alcohol industry, and then started, like, taking the World Directory and the national directory and just sending his papers out to the AAs there, right? And it was full of, like, literal, um, and then the more New York tried to talk to him.

[27:24] Jackie B.: Um, the more viterolic he became, and he was really offended that the Grapevine was created. to compete with him, because he thought that that's what it was for. Um, and you can see he was… he loved Marty Mann. I think he was a little obsessed with her, but Marty at the time was… she was a person who was out, um, and she's also really important in how we talk about, um, the evolution of, um. anonymity. But, you know, all these experiences, especially the experiences of local press, of local newsletters, all of that came together, um, along with. all the lessons, trial and error, that led to our traditions, and thanks to the Grapevine, there was a place where Bill could.

[28:05] Jackie B.: you know, begin to publish his thoughts. and communicate with the fellowship, hear back a little bit from them, um, and the Grapevine is a vital part of our history, um, because of, especially. their part in the, um, in the traditions. 12… Suggested points for a tradition published in April 1947, um, placing down what became. Uh, on paper, uh, our public relations policy. of attraction, not promotion, our public relations, um, and anonymity at the level of press, radio, and film, which essentially.

[28:42] One-to-Many Communication: Broadcast Media

[28:42] Jackie B.: one-to-many communication, broadcast, media. Um, and this is one of the first early examples of a letter that used to be… that the office still to this day sends out, except now they send it by email, right, to local press, and local PI committees can also. have access to, you know, a template and should be sending out, I believe, in my opinion, it would be good for them to send out to local newsletters, just a reminder of why we're anonymous. And it's just as important today as it was back then. Um, and then, you know, one of the important moments in the Grapevine, too, was when Bill published, Why Can't We Join AA2? And this was, um, when it was the late 40s, and essentially the idea, um, realizing that Bob was sick.

[29:31] Jackie B.: Bill actually was getting really tired, um, and then he would get energy, and then he'd get really tired, which I relate to. Uh, and… uh, you realize that Bill and Bob, like, it couldn't just have these founders be the only link between. the office that owned our literature and our publishing arm and our national. you know, public relations that essentially was the heartbeat, the heartblood of our communication worldwide. It couldn't just be these two people, because they were gonna. pass away, there needed to be something that connected. A.A. groups to the owners of that communication nexus that was. the General Service Office. And so that became the proposal to have the General Service Conference, which started out as a trial conference, and this is what Bill said about the General Service Conference. This is from that 1960 talk.

[30:23] Jackie B.: Um, but this is what he said about the conference. as an idea. This conference is a great network of communication. I have profound confidence in the future of this conference… of this conference as an instrument guaranteeing our unity and functioning. which he had mentioned, right? Our lives, our unity, our functioning, depends on communication. Um, and in 1955, uh, the trial ended and the conference was adopted permanently in St. Louis. So, if we look at… that idea of, like, mass communication in terms of print. that one-to-the-many. What we see in terms of affordances is that print was very durable, it was reproducible, and it created, as someone pointed out to me yesterday, a very shared reference point, which is why, to this day, we can connect with someone.

[31:16] Jackie B.: You know, across the world, you know, whether, you know, in our online meetings or whatnot, and share these moments of these… these quotes, these ways of thinking about the queer mental twist, right? We have a common language. Um, and a book and print is very good at creating that, but it can also be fixed or static. It's passive, meaning it is not participatory, right? And humans really like participating, so communication that's based on participation is always going to have a little bit more, um, energy behind it. Um, and it was very slow and expensive, and CANS is very slow and expensive, and there's been a lot of, you know, amazing things happening with, like. self-publishing and the democratization of, like, the online publishing to this day, but it's still… you know, in terms of actual physical print.

[32:07] Jackie B.: slow and relatively expensive, compared to… Broadcast Media, another example of mass communication. So, you know, radio, um, when A.A. began in 1935, radios were gaining in popularity. Newspapers and magazines were still kind of one of the dominant form of mass communication, but by the time the book was written, 1939, radios were in 75% of American households, and by 1940, up to 83%. of American households. It's where, um, most Americans got their, um, news. They're entertainment, um, and uh, it was a moment in A.A. history when that book was sitting in the office.

[32:50] Jackie B.: Um, in the warehouse, right, I told that story. One of the things, they took their last, like, I think it was, like, $500, the last little bit of money, Bill and Hank, and they bought these postcards, and they sent these postcards out saying, hey, we're gonna have an alcoholic named Morgan is gonna be interviewed on this national, um, radio show called We the People with Gabriel Heater. And it was… it was wonderful, and a woman in San Francisco heard that. radio broadcasts and wrote to New York, and paid $57 plus shipping to get the book, and gave it to her alcoholic, um, tenant. Ted S, and that was the start of San… my hometown, A.A. in San Francisco.

[33:32] Jackie B.: But they only received about 14 responses, including that woman. So, you know, they still… it was still kind of a struggle, and that's the thing about, you know, exposure in the media. It kind of builds, and different mediums, right? So you had radio, they had stuff happening in the, um. Uh, in newspapers and magazines, and it all started building, and here are some other moments of A.A.’s story in, uh, radio technology and broadcast media. Um, in 1941, so now we got the Jack Alexander article, it's… people are talking about A.A. in NBC Radio puts out a 13-part series. asking, is alcohol a problem in your home? In 1946, Marty Mann is interviewed on We the People.

[34:17] Jackie B.: In 1949, there is a very popular 10-episode drama. Radio dramas, there were a lot of radio dramas about A.A. Um, really, really interesting. I wish I could, like, get my little… theatrical fingers on them. Um, and then as I approached the 50s and 60s, radio just became a part of the. more, like, formalized public information strategy. And, um, in the 1960s. Um, you know, because of the FCC said, like, you have to have a radio stations have to have a certain amount of. time set aside for public service announcements, then, you know, suddenly it wasn't as expensive, the idea of buying time on radio. And so that's when they started producing the General Service Office started producing public service announcements. And there are people here who know the history better, so I might be make… I'm probably making mistakes.

[35:09] Jackie B.: So, you know, take everything a little bit with a grain of salt, right? But a lot of my sources were Box 459, Grapevine articles, and Grapevine sometimes will often get things. you know, general service manager Bob P. So, but somewhere around the 60s, it seems like it became real policy. Another really great moment in radio was, um, Lillian Roth getting interviewed in Australia. Um, and uh, that's basically helped A.A. really spread in Australia. Lillian was, um, a radio star, uh, I mean, she was the… one of the major celebrities that broke their anonymity. In every possible medium, you could break your anonymity. She broke her anonymity. Um, and Bill would try to talk to her about it, and she would get very upset. Um, so I got to see some of the letters between them, and she… she felt very, uh, victimized.

[36:05] Jackie B.: Um, and was not the only one. But these are just newspaper. There she is, uh, her biography in print, right? Um, later, um, TV, she had as well, and film. Speaking of TV… And TVs, in 87% of homes had TVs by 1960. Um, it started… it definitely became much wildly successful as a means of broadcast media, far exceeding radio, especially by this time. And one of the. earlier TV moments was, uh, the link letter show, Art Linklater interviewed… this is a picture from the Dayton, Ohio group, and they… and they had their masks on for a little local. Um, but on the… on the link later show, he interviewed a woman wearing a mask. So, I didn't have a picture of a woman wearing a mask, um, so I showed that, but you just have to imagine it's, like, one woman, and she's wearing a mask, and she's being interviewed by.

[37:01] Jackie B.: Um, art link letter on national TV. Another really important moment on national TV… oh, look, it's Lillian Roth! Who was on, uh, This Is Your Life. completely talking about A.A. with her husband, who… that's a fascinating story, too. I could… talk about Lillian all day. Um, and then this was also a moment I really love in AATV history. So. I… you're noticing I'm not talking about film. Jackie, what about film? What about film? What about the March of Times newsreel? Like, but film wasn't broadcast, and so, um, I'm already running out of time, so I skipped film. But. the… before the Days of Wine and Roses was a movie, it was, um, actually a dramatized play on, uh, the Playhouse 90. It's… I like it better than the movie, so if you have a chance to see Piper Laurie.

[37:54] Jackie B.: This is a brilliant, um, you know, um… presentation. And the one that we're probably all familiar about, and all these moments increased A.A. membership and spread, is you have to kind of mention. Um, build, you know, my name is Bill W, the, uh… the TV movie. Um, something that was happening on radio and TV during this time, and it's hard for me to have any kind of documented examples to share with you, is there were meetings being. on radio. A.A. members were taking their groups and putting their meetings on radio, and then they were doing it on TV, and, you know, doing what… hiding their anonymity, but this was a thing. People… you know, this was a thing that was happening over and over again. So I also want to say that, but, you know, radio dramas were very important. So what are the affordances about broadcast media? It has mass reach.

[38:43] Jackie B.: It's emotional, sensory, sound and images. It's far more accessible in terms of literacy, um, you know, books still were kind of expensive, um, and then you dealt with literacy rates, and just many ways, it was very… and a very accessible form of media, very popular. But it, once again, very passive, very ephemeral, because at the time, you know, you didn't have a DVR, which we don't have anymore. If you don't know what a DVR is, that's okay. you know, VHS to record it, or whatever we do, right? So it was… and it was sensational, too, and that was the nature of, kind of, the economic realities of radio and TV, too, though. Like, they always reach for sensational stories. And so there was always this glean of sensationalism, right? Um, that was really hard, try as you might, to, like, use it as a medium. And it was slow and expensive.

[39:35] Many-to-Many Communication: Digital Media

[39:35] Jackie B.: Okay, so, fortunately, I don't have a lot of time left, because this is the hardest part for me to tell the story, and everyone here probably remembers a big part of the story of… Digital media, and… but here's the interesting thing. So we talked about one-to-one communication, we talked about one-to-many, and then digital media is this other thing that is many-to-many. And, um, there's this one writer I really like named Dana Boyd, and she talks about, um, network publics, this idea of suddenly of network connections happening in these semi-public spaces, but we'll talk about the affordances later. But, um, the kind of many-to-many networked relationship is one of the main features of the internet. Along with some other important features. So, this is, like, the first article.

[40:24] Jackie B.: Uh, whoa. I went backwards. Um, from the Grapevine, I could find that mentions a computer, but it has nothing to do with computers other than, like, the allegory. But, you know, the rise of personal computers and the internet and all of that, um, in the 70s, but then the personal commuter. access in the 80s, um, was revolutionary for. all the world, but… and, of course, A.A., and then we're looking at the computerization, so I talked about those, like, group records being monsters. So, the office, several times. dealt with computers, and the process in which, um, there are people here who can talk to you about the whole process of. getting computers. I talked to a past general service office manager, George Dorsey, who recently passed away, and I asked him about if he remembered anything about the computerization.

[41:14] Jackie B.: Um, in 19… in the… 70s, essentially. They started having ad hocs to discuss computers and computer records as early. Um, as 1970. This is from 1971, so I think, like, the first computer they bought was 1971, but the first, like. major move to have an infrastructure around group records and computers. Um, they were talking about. And, um, George said, oh, you can't believe the upheaval people made, because how dare you assign a group number to a group? A group is a spiritual entity, it's not a number. Which is similar to how people reacted to telephone numbers, uh, in the late 1800s, is they felt like, how dare you assign a human being a number? So, anyway, moving on, 1984, uh, Bob Pearson gave a whole talk about the computer, um. in the computer age, and then you start to see a lot of different articles and newsletters talking about this.

[42:14] Jackie B.: And the thing is, there were, um, intergroups and local, um, smaller groups using computers and personal computers. A part of they had to do this is because there were areas and districts already using, um, computers, and then the really great thing about that. Uh, that thing is that Bob Pearson's like, does this mean we should connect our computers to the computers of the local art areas and districts? Absolutely not. So, he felt very strongly about that. So anyway, um, but in terms of, like, A.A. members, uh, it was the online bulletin board systems. Um, I was kept hearing people talk about recovery BBS, and this BBS, and I kept thinking Big Book Study, oh, an online big book study, and no, BBS was an electronic bulletin board service, and apparently it looked something like this, I don't know.

[43:04] Jackie B.: I definitely don't know. I kept trying to imagine what it looked like. So this is where my knowledge bails me. But the first online A.A. meetings were held, uh, using bulletin boards. One of the first ones, we think, was around 1986, uh, the Steps of DC on FidoNet. You know what that is. Um, and then Recovery BBS was a big one, and they, like, advertised in computer magazines. Um, and yeah, this is this idea of networks, and so it was like, you would leave a message, and then someone else could respond to the message. So you started having, like, this durability of messages, and there were a couple… but it was very hard to have simultaneous chat, like, at this time, so… It was kind of, like, a little bit the way, like, forums still work to this day. Um, then you see these articles come out in the Grapevine talking about the experience of.

[43:56] Jackie B.: BBS. Now, this is why, if nothing else, you should support the Grapevine, because. I would not be able to… there's… there was so much in the Grapevine, I could do an entire thing in the Grapevine about digital media and how it talked about that change, and computers, because they did so many special sections. on… on these topics, and had all these amazing stories, and people reacting to it. The topic of BBSs also came up again in box 459, talking about bulletin board systems, so that's the predecessor. Um, lamplighters was one of the biggest. Um, most well-known early, um, of, uh, the online groups. It was called Lamplighters because it was started by, in the late 80s, by some, um, AAs who worked at GE. with the light bulbs. And so it started out as an internal.

[44:45] Jackie B.: like, kind of their internal… they use their internal communication network to connect with each other. Uh, and then they opened it up to the World Wide Web. Um, another really important moment in digital media spreading was the 1970… probably some people who were here! Uh, 1994, there was a living cyber committee that was formed to plan and host the Cyber Hospitality Suite. For online members at an upcoming… the upcoming international, and that produced… there were talks at this conference, I think it might have been the first conference. international convention to have, like, talks really about online A.A. And that led to the online intergroup being started, I believe in 1996. Um, and that is from the Wayback Machine, so that is approximately what it looked like. Back then. And then I mentioned those special editions of the Grapevine.

[45:38] Jackie B.: And here was them, and they were very long, and then the Grapevine would also publish the responses, and my favorite, uh, most common response to both of these special editions is, why did you make it so long? Did I really need to read 24 pages? I don't even have a computer, nor do I want one. That was a very common letter response. And God bless the Grapevine, because that's what the Grapevine does, right? It's the collect… it's the voices. of A.A., and it's durable. It is not only today the mirror of today, but it shows us that, like. time capsule of what A.A. has been like since the 40s. So, um, can you tell I love the Grapevine?

[46:19] Websites, Apps, Accessibility, and AI

[46:19] Jackie B.: And I have to wrap up. Um, on… there was a discussion starting in the 90s about having a website, and that is one of the images of the very first website. Thank you, archive capture, December 22nd, 1995. AA.org went live. Um, and then the Grapevine, a couple years later, also, one of my favorite things about the A.A. Grapevine is they had a forum. Which had some really beautiful things in it. I have 20 seconds. So, now we're talking digital media, and then the late… the 2010s online COVID, the apps. The National A.A. Technology Workshop has been around for this stuff. And obviously, we know that the Grapevine and G.S.O. has all adapted to these new forms. American Sign Language, DeafAA.org, so the way it's being used for accessibility purposes. Um, and then the most recent issue dealing with AI, so thank you.

[47:33] Closing

[47:33] Host: I could have listened to that for another hour. Fascinating. Amazing. Thank you very much.