THE MODERN QUILL:

What’s in a Name: Signatures, autopen, and the question of verifiable identity (David E. Brown, Winter 2001/2, CABINET)

An Autopen looks like a cross between a school desk and a pantograph—an arm jutting out of a 1960s-looking enclosure grips a felt-tip pen. Inside the machine is a model of a signature; the penned arm extends out onto the desk and accurately re-creates the signature “matrix” inside, hundreds or thousands of times a day. Early users were presidents and CEOs, who could have spent weeks signing their names, barely making a dent in the demands of the important identity. (A more recent application is direct-mail marketing, which benefits from a “personal” touch.)

The Autopen was a lifesaver for important men. But the Autopen undid some of the progress that had been made in identification. Your signature, with its practiced flourish, is as close to you that writing can get. “I am that I am,” your signature wants to say. And that closeness-to-you is what convinces governments and banks and landlords that you are who you claim to be. But how can that certainty exist along with a machine that can sign and sign and sign, with no care as to who has told the machine to sign? (It can’t, as evidenced by a series of unauthorized, autopenned Donald Rumsfeld signatures that appeared on official documents in early 2001.2)

To say nothing of value. After the Autopen was adopted by US presidents (LBJ was a big user, as was Nixon and everyone since) it found new markets among celebrities. It really is hard to sign your name for hours and hours, but maybe not so hard as disappointing one’s fans. So by the late 1960s many famous people had their own Autopens churning out signatures for the people. And while Autopen signatures from presidents and business leaders had been accepted at more or less face value, they did not have to deal with the invisible hand of the collectibles market. An Autopenned document may be good enough for the Department of Defense, but don’t try to convince a collector that a machine carries the emotional—and thus, in the irrational economics of nostalgia, financial—weight of a real autograph.

A recent eBay search turned up just two Autopenned items among the 60,000-plus autographed 8x10s, books, and other baubles up for sale. And of that multitude of signatures up for bid, hundreds of their sellers went out of their way to point out that they weren’t Autopenned. If we accept the opinion of the collectibles market—and as odd as that market is, there seems to be no reason not to—then eBay has become the ultimate measure of desire, value, and authenticity. And that measure says that more than a century of effort to create a mechanical stand-in for the human hand, for the written personality, has come to naught.

MAYBE JUST BE A DECENT HUMAN BEING?:

Most Men Don’t Want To Be Heroes (And That’s Okay): Despite the self-pity of some, there has never been a better time to be a man (Toby Buckle, 17 Mar 2025, Liberal Currents)

When I was much younger, I saved someone from drowning. They had (possibly while intoxicated) gone into a rough and choppy sea, at night, and were struggling to stay above water. Worse, the tide was pulling them out. I went in after them and, with some effort, brought them back to shore. As we got close, an older man I did not know also came in to help and, between the two of us, we dragged them out. Exhausted and freezing cold, but safe.

It might surprise someone like Arnade to learn that this has not proved an especially important moment in my life. I’m glad I did it. I received profuse thanks from the person in question and general plaudits from my peers (which Arnade imagines all young men need). And then, well… life moves on. Other things happen to you. It’s not something that’s provided any great moral lesson for me. Nor is it important to my sense of identity—this is the first time I’ve mentioned it publicly, not out of humility; I honestly just don’t really think about it.

I’ve also provided support to people in less dramatic, more long-term, more female-coded ways. For instance, assisting a loved one through a disability. Or being, with my family, a carer for a close relative with Alzheimer’s. There is absolutely no doubt the latter have given more meaning to me, developed my character more, and have strengthened my relationships with others in a way more traditional ‘heroics’ couldn’t.

Providing long-term care for someone is an endless series of small decisions to prioritize the other person, most in themselves trivial and quickly forgotten. Rather than one moment in which you have to master yourself, you have to decide to continually live that value. And it improves you. It will teach to be kind, it will teach you how to care about someone in a way that taking a one-time risk won’t. You will feel frustration with people for things that are not their fault and have to move past that. You’ll then feel guilt—often quite profound guilt—for having felt that frustration. You will learn—and you will be forced to learn—how to forgive others and yourself. All of this will be mixed with moments of real joy and real connection. I can’t speak for everyone, but these have been among the most important parts of my life.

On a societal level, if there is a crisis of acts of service not being recognised it is of this latter, female-coded, kind. Despite Arnade’s claim that heroics are now (somehow) looked down on, whenever I’ve done something (even something quite minor) that fits this male-coded frame, I’ve received praise and recognition. In Arnade’s own story—which he takes as an exemplar of his thesis—the ‘hero’ (who retrieved a drunk from a locked bathroom) was bought drinks and made to feel good about his actions. (“he strutted around like the cat’s meow.”) In contrast, looking after a relative in cognitive decline can be very isolating. Despite it being the much more common experience, many carers feel profoundly alone. Finally, as societies age, more and more of us are going to need to fill this role.

There is not the same structural need for an army of men pulling people out of locked bathrooms or choppy seas. That’s not the point, Arnade might say—men need that, and without it we’ll be forlorn, miserable, useless mopes. But will we? For most of us, a true emergency rescue moment might happen once or twice throughout your life. You want to meet the moment, but I think it will be challenging to build a stable identity around.

It’s perfectly normal to want to be the hero of your own story, but imagine how insecure (unmanly) you have to be to demand others pretend you heroic?