The Cap'n Keeps on Crunchin'
It must have been the early 1970's when I first came across Cap'n Crunch. The Freak Brothers were still Fabulous (and Furry), The Airplane were still Bathing at Baxter's, the Dead were still Grateful to be alive...
I was ostensibly a student of Sociology at a college in the English Midlands. In fact, I was pretty much a full-time hippie, and, as such, in thrall to all things Californian, particularly San Franciscan.
Cap'n Crunch, so Rolling Stone informed me, was using a whistle to tap into MaBell's long-distance phone lines. By imitating the tones with the whistle, free long distance was anyone's for the taking. (The Cap'n's name, it seems, came from the cereal which gave away the whistles. In England, the same whistle came free with Rice Krispies.)
This was a very cool thing to do. According to the prevailing hippie ideology of the times, MaBell, as a huge corporation, was, by definition, "evil" and therefore deserved to be ripped off. And the good Cap'n represented the human face of the little guy - "us" - outsmarting MaBell, a communications colossus - "them". And he was doing it with a stupid whistle from a packet of cereal.
That was it. Cap'n Crunch was consigned to being a footnote in the history of those tumultuous times.
I didn't give the Cap'n so much as a second thought over the next twenty-five years.
On a whim, a couple of months ago, I fed "Cap'n Crunch" into Digital's World Wide Web search engine, Alta Vista. In amongst the references to Quaker Oats, I found http://www.vcomm.net/~crunch/. This is a listing of directories for John Draper - "Cap'n Crunch".
The four sections - play, ibmstory, live and work - chronicle Draper's life, from his early exploits as a "phone phreak" (and his subsequent sojourn as a guest of the Department of Corrections), his invention of the first ever word processing program and his involvement with a nascent Apple Computers, to his current participation in the "rave" scene and his involvement in the World Wide Web.
It's pretty interesting stuff, although it's fair to say that the site is a bit graphically heavy for my taste, is easy to get lost in and could have benefited from the use of a spell-checker.
Draper lives in Mill Valley. I eMailed him and asked whether we could meet. I wanted to see what this apocraphyl figure was up to these days.
We exchanged eMails and played phone tag, and eventually met at the Depot in Mill Valley.
Draper was accompanied by a lady called Claudia. Claudia is a Registered Nurse, and seemed to function as a kind of Business Manager/Secretary/Driver.
Draper himself looked a little the worse for wear, although I suppose that anyone who has done as much as he is bound to show the physical effects of time and experience.
We talked about his past, his affinity for technology, his ability to comprehend exceedingly complex problems and devise simple, elegant solutions. There is a sense in which his tale is a familiar one. Innovators and inventors in the Brave New World of high-technology rarely reap the rewards of their skill and talent. Bill Gates and Microsoft, for example, have never devised anything truly innovative, they have simply developed and marketed concepts devised by others.
The theme that emerged from my conversation with John Draper was his commitment to the needs of common man, and his desire to make the fruits of technological innovation available to all.
He has a fine grasp of the significance of the New Medium. He understands almost instinctively the potential of the Web to transform our means of social, political and economic interaction. He is using his skills and understanding of the medium to help businesses and individuals obtain a web presence at exceedingly low cost, as both sole proprietor of Web Crunchers (what else?) and as part of the Marin Cybergroup.
John Draper continues to demonstrate a commitment to the 'sixties ideals of sharing and accessibility to the new medium, ideals which seem to be somewhat unfashionable these days.
One could argue that, just as in any other medium, unless you are going to do something yourself, you get what you pay for....
But hey! There's lots of room out there for everyone. So, Cap'n - just keep on crunchin'...
John Draper has a homepage at: http://www.well.com/user/crunch/
© 1996 John Blower/FeNiKs