A Quiet Day on Twitter

One of the Tweets today observed that it was all very quiet. This prompted the following observations. I know I am now a senior citizen because every so often I have to resist the temptation of starting a sentence with the words, ‘in the fifties...’ I am afraid I look back on those rather bleak times with great affection, even though I didn’t fully appreciate what it meant for me i.e., practically no chance of higher education or a job that required the use of a brain. Such was the lot of many of us Secondary Mod types. (That explains a few shoulder chips I hear you say). With school being a bit predictable many of us tried to specialise in technical matters. Chemistry sets were all the rage, mainly with a view to making smells and bangs, while Amateur Radio was another. It was this latter interest that I devoted some time to. Living right in the middle of a town my parents preferred Rediffusion whereby top quality sound from the Home Service, the Light Programme and Radio Three was piped into our home, which happened to be a pub. I mention this as reliable reception was essential for the big fight nights when the bars would be full to hear Freddie Mills, or one of the other boxing heroes of the day, do the distance to a usually bloody victory. With trolley bus cables and four sets of traffic lights conventional radios would deliver programmes through a haze of interference.

My main ambition was of course to get tuned into some of the radio stations coming from Europe. Radio Luxembourg was the main target because from the mid-fifties it was picking up on youth culture and playing records which would never get to the BBC’s limited popular music coverage. True Ham ( Amateur) Radio was all about , men, and they almost usually were, building transmitters and communicating with people all over the world by means of the short wave frequency. This was rather ‘hit and miss’ as atmospheric conditions and the randomness of the ionosphere would determine whether or not another enthusiast would be contacted. At the centre of this pastime for me was the magazine ‘Practical Wireless’ which contained many advertisements for radios you could build from kits. The one I bought looked good but even my science teacher could not get it to work. I soon went off the idea of amateur radio when I learnt that I not only had to pass an exam but under the then licensing laws the only conversations permitted were with regard to the technical details of the respective sets involved and other spoddy type info. When I was able to buy old valve sets from auctions, Radio Luxembourg and Voice of America, as well as the American Forces Network, soon replaced the BBC as I was able to tune into jazz programmes beyond my limited knowledge. This was achieved by climbing over the pub roof and putting up a hundred feet of aerial wire. I never did tell my parents. In 1961 we moved to the Kent coast where the reception was astounding compared with that at the pub. I even caught JFK live when he broadcast to the world setting out his brinkmanship policy over Cuba: a tad worrying at the time.

So it is with this background that I came to the internet, e-mail, blogging and Twitter. It really is a system of communication which far, far, exceeds our smoggy ambitions of the fifties. Political action was all to do with leaflets and pamphlets laboriously produced by means of a stencil and a hand cranked Gestetner. If there was a bit of money then you might be able to get a professional printer to run some leaflets off. In my part of the world there was a firm run by a Quaker family so the regional CND was greatly indebted to them. Letters to the editor l seem rather quaint now. We did toy with the idea of a pirate radio outside the three mile limit but transmitters, not to mention boats, were well beyond our teenage means or abilities.

By way of contrast I can now be in contact with like minded people all over the world should I care to put in the effort. I can play my part in the dissemination of information and receive as much as I want in return. I can achieve through Skype what radio hams could not do within the technology and licence terms of their day. This is why Twitter and the like is so important to small businesses, environmental campaigning and why the boundaries between town and country can be crossed with ease. It also means that the coming generations of elderly people need never be lonely as long as they can log on and take part. It also means that those who are oppressed by their rulers will always find ways of getting the facts through to the wider world, which will eventually become a ‘global village’ ( see www.marshallmcluhan.com/ ), if we can sustain it. I think it was G.K.Chesterton who said that the village was the highest form of civilisation. To get a global village is surely a worthy aim. Ghandi would probably say, as he did of western civilisation, ‘Now that would be a good idea’.

Dacier