THE STEALTH METAPHOR.

RAYMOND Gozzi, JR. [*]

I FIRST BECAME AWARE of the stealth metaphor when I read about stealth telephone towers. Cellular phone systems require large, unsightly towers for antennas -- which are often the subject of lawsuits by angry towns who don't want these eyesores in their neighborhoods. But as wireless services become popular, the towers are proliferating. By 1997, there were almost 40,000 antenna sites in the U.S. (Revkin, Jan. 11, 1998). One estimate says that, with digital cellular phone service coming, 60,000 new towers will be needed by 2007. (See Christe, 1999.)

Rather than fight costly legal battles, cellular companies have used ingenuity to disguise their towers as other, quite normal, pieces of the skyline. Some stealth towers are disguised as trees, but since they must reach a certain height, these trees too often stand out as obvious fakes. Some towers are hidden in large flagpoles. A big truck stop sign in Long Island houses a stealth antenna. There is even a tower on the "Green Monster" left field wall in Fenway Park.

One cellular company built a fake silo for a farm in upstate New York, to blend in with the rural scenery. It had to be built of concrete, because the nails in a real silo would interfere with reception. "It's taller than what a silo would normally be, but otherwise, it looks just like a silo" said a neighbor (New York Times, Jan. 17, 1999).

One of the most popular sites for stealth towers, however, is proving to be church steeples. Wired Magazine estimated that in 1999 there were 300 to 500 steeples in the United States housing stealth towers. These included the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., which receives an estimated $100,000 a year from Motorola. A more typical payment is around $1,000 a month to a church, or farmer, willing to house a stealth tower.

Many churches find it hard to resist such an income. A church in La Habra, California, built a separate steeple-like structure to house the antenna, and made a deal with Pacific Bell to receive $14,400 per year "forever" (as told to Christe, 1999.) Haven't they heard of the Second Coming?

When it comes to telephones, the stealth metaphor doesn't stop with antenna towers. Have you noticed those new telephone services that use just numbers, such as 10-10-321, instead of a business name? They even advertise on television. Where they come from is rarely revealed -- even in their direct mailing pitches. They just seem to appear out of cyberspace, suddenly, unexpect-edly, and offer lower rates on calls to Scandinavia.

Some of these companies are actually divisions of major long-distance providers. They do not reveal their affiliation because they are searching for a younger, hipper audience who might feel the old, big companies are too stodgy for their image. These are called stealth brands of phone service. AT&T tried out a stealth brand called Lucky Dog Phone Company in 1998 (Schiesel, Oct. 7, 1998). The advertising stressed sweepstakes, free prizes, low prices, and made no mention of AT&T. But the most long-lived telephone stealth brands come from MCI-Worldcom, AT&T's biggest competitor: 10-10-321, and 1-800-COLLECT. I have never seen any advertising for these brands which mentions their parent company.

The stealth metaphor, of course, comes from the "stealth technology" which produced those ominous-looking black fighter planes and bombers. "Stealth" refers to the ability of the technology to make the plane invisible to radar. I recall when the technology was first revealed to the public, there were newspaper articles explaining how the technology worked, with accompanying diagrams. It was partly the plane's shape, the articles explained, but also special properties of the black paint, which would absorb radar signals without reflecting them back. The diagrams showed arrows being absorbed by several layers of black paint. I remember thinking it was odd that a top-secret technology should be explained in the morning newspaper, and wondered if some other stealth operation was at work.

The explanations and diagrams returned when a F-l17A stealth fighter was shot down over Yugoslavia in 1999. A New York Times article on April 1 explained that the stealth technology did not make the plane exactly invisible, just harder to detect in most circumstances. An accompanying graphic pointed out, once again, the plane's shape and the "radar absorbent material" as key elements of the technology. (See Leary, April 1, 1999.)

What secrets the "stealth" technology may actually hide are probably not included in the press releases. However, it has served as a metaphor for stealth processes elsewhere, in surprising places such as Los Angeles homes.

Los Angeles has been called a "postmodern city," decentered, addicted to flashy surfaces at the expense of substance. It has also been a hotbed of homeowner fear and activism for many years, as different "threats" have been served up by media and politicians. The enduring threat of crime from impoverished minorities (or is that majorities?) has called forth many responses. One of these responses is the "stealth house."

According to LA historian Mike Davis (1990), architect Frank Gehry pioneered the stealth house. This kind of house looks drab and dreary on the outside, but is plush and sumptuous inside. Some exteriors are intentionally rough-finished to look like warehouse walls. The goal is to give no hint of the wealth of the owners, so it will not attract the attention of burglars or stir resentment of neighbors.

Davis notes that the stealth house design is "introverted and fortress-like" (1990, p.238). He sees such architecture as a metaphor for a larger social retreat from public spaces. People want to stay below the radar of their presumably jealous and less well-off neighbors. Social fragmentation and community disintegration persist, making it seem more necessary than ever to hide out.

One final use of the stealth metaphor that has come to my attention brings us back to the world of electronics. On computer networks, stealth scanners are automatic programs which gather information about target sites. Intruders want to know as much as possible about a site, but many of their methods of gathering information will alert security programs and activate countermeasures. In contrast stealth scanners are designed not to draw attention to themselves.

One technique, according to the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie-Mellon University, is called "inverse mapping." The Stealth scanner sends innocuous packets of information to a list of addresses. For the addresses that do not exist, network routers send back a "host unreachable" message. "By determining which hosts do not exist, an intruder can infer what hosts do exist, and so gain information about the structure of your network." (Cert Incident Note IN-98.04.)

Another technique is called "slow scanning," where the stealth scanner simply scans the network at a slow rate which will likely avoid detection. If intruders can discover details of a system's architecture, this will give them better maps to use in penetrating security.

Apparently such stealth scanning techniques are used by many intruders, sometimes in a coordinated effort. A U.S. Navy report even called this activity an "attack." So we use stealth airplanes, but "others" use stealth scanners.

The stealth metaphor implies invisibility, deception, hostility, and surprise. It indicates that our early warning radar might not be able to detect an attack in time. We might turn around and some big, black bug-like airplane is overhead, ready to zap us. Or maybe that church steeple across the street is really constantly broadcasting cell phone messages which interfere with our radios, TV, and electronic devices. Or maybe that ugly warehouse down the block is actually an opulent mansion.

In the postmodern world full of high-speed electronics, we are less able to count on our senses for accurate and timely information about our environment. And when the element of stealth is mixed in, we'd better expect some surprises.

(*.) Raymond Gozzi, Jr., is Associate Professor in the Park School of Communications, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY. His most recent book, The Power of Metaphor in the Age of Electronic Media, Hampton Press, 1999, contains articles from Dr. Gozzi's columns in ETC, as well as new chapters on metaphor, and is available from ISGS.

REFERENCES

Christe, I. (February, 1999) "Divine Calling." Wired Magazine, p.70.

Computer Emergency Response Team. (1998). "Advanced Scanning: CERT Incident Note IN-98.04." Available at: http://www.cert.org.

Davis, M. (1990). City of Quartz. NY: Vintage Books.

Leary, W. (April 1, 1999) "Stealth Gives Plane Mask, But Not Cloak, Experts Say." The New York Times, p.A16.

New York Times. (Jan. 17, 1999) "An Old-fashioned Look for a New Technology." p.38.

Revkin, A. (Jan. 11, 1998) "It's a Tree! It's a Cactus!" New York Times p.21.

Schiesel, S. (Oct. 7, 1998) "Formerly Staid Ma Bell has a Secret Offspring." New York Times, p.A1.