Kilroy Was Here

If you are of a certain age, you might have seen the title phrase scrawled on a bathroom stall years ago. The phrase and accompanying cartoon of a bald man peering over a wall with clutched fingers became popular in WWII. Origin stories vary but one that is widely accepted is that the original Kilroy was James J. Kilroy, a shipyard inspector who validated the work of riveters with the now famous “tag.” He used it when inspecting rivet work on the hulls of many ships, especially those used for troop transport overseas.

GI’s saw the graffiti on their transport ships and it spread. Kilroy was the “super GI” who was always the first to arrive. Hitler saw the phrase on captured American equipment and decided that Kilroy was a high-level spy. A special outhouse was built for Truman, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. The first person to use it was Stalin who emerged and asked, “Who is Kilroy?”

Whatever the origin, “Kilroy was here” developed a life of its own even beyond the war. Kilroy was perhaps the first official American “emoji.” Today we have a wide variety of graphical emoticons to convey a writer’s mood or thought. The “happy face” and “thumbs-up” are popular having replaced the much earlier :-) [colon, dash, right parenthesis-now forces a graphic on some screens] that was possible before computer screens and printers could render images.

In Kilroy’s time, life was simple and the graffiti of the Kilroy character peering at you over his wall was amusing. Personal interactions back then were most often face-to-face with only occasional phone calls or letters to fill in the communication voids. Look around a room today and you are likely to see faces buried in ever-larger handheld screens communicating with other electronically linked souls. Some of those souls might even be in the same room.

Studies are all over the map as to the advantages and disadvantages of this shift to electronic communication and away from interpersonal dialogue. On the downside is the loss of nonverbal communication skills where much of the information resides.

One researcher, Albert Mehrabian, broke down communication as 55-38-7 where those percentages represented nonverbal-vocal-words. While those percentages can certainly be debated, and they are, expressions, body language, and inflection go a long way to conveying a message in a language where words alone can have varied interpretations.

The flip side that favors technology holds that it benefits those who might otherwise lack the ability to interact with others due to shyness, physical limitations, distance, or other reasons. Others posit that the Internet provides a platform for self-disclosure that might not happen without the thin veil of computer confidence which is similar to beer bravery and whiskey courage.

As someone who made a living through technology, I see it as an overall positive with a downside that we need to address. This holds especially true for developing minds. Young people should be forced while in school to develop face-to-face skills and taught the proper place and use of technology.

While Kilroy may have been replaced with a smiley-face emoji, we need to continue to expand and develop our interpersonal communication skills. An emoticon will not replace actual human expression, at least not soon. I can imagine a future where a camera mounted on your communication device of choice reads your body language and facial expressions and, using Artificial Intelligence, changes the inflection and tone of your comments and punctuates them with a realistic 3-D holographic emoticon.

I’ll leave you with my favorite Kilroy sighting. It was on a bathroom wall where it had been written, “I can yell, and jump for joy, ‘cause I was here before Kilroy.” Beneath that was scrawled, “Sorry to spoil, your little joke, I was here before, but my pencil broke, Kilroy.”