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

Tweeting and the Twitter Twits at the BBC

Two weeks ago the Today Programme, mainly through the agency of Mr John Humphries, had a go at Twitter. Apparently Mathew Paris had been asked to judge some kind of student competition and the audience and participants were invited to tweet each other throughout. What the competition was and why the invitation was extended I have no idea, nor do I wish to have one. Mathew Paris responded in a brilliant piece of prose within the character limit which was admirable, if rather scathing. I have no argument with Mr Paris at all. I respect him both as an ex-politicians, journalist and excellent commentator. What I take exception to was the patronising, and at times dismissive response of Mr Humphries and the background sniggerers in the studio. It was clear that the gargling classes in this matter did not understand what Twitter could be about, would rather not know, and displayed their technophobe credentials, rather like the primitive who might spurn the benefits of an invention like the parachute.

In my experience the phobia to which I refer is displayed by a mocking laziness which denies the possibility that there might be something in the subject under discussion. Those who will decry what I have called the ‘privatisation of society’, namely the cloistering of us all into out little boxes where we are unlikely to know who is in the next box, also decry the expansion of communications which are now available to us all. From our ‘isolated’ residence, as journalists often describe this part of the world, I can be in touch with any number of people , check out my facts and e-mail my MPs and Councillor should I so wish. I am as isolated as I want to be or as much in the swim as I feel I need to be. Granted, there are all sorts of people using Twitter, many of whom you will quickly block, but there are others who you will gladly spare some time to see what they have to say or what information they want to pass on. This can be both entertaining and informative, as well as plain nosy.

So why all the mockery? In the first place it is a natural response when confronted by something new, which requires a bit of effort to understand, and which consciously or subconsciously threatens the status quo, to resort to mocking the messenger. Secondly, and I have banged on about this several times already, perhaps the antagonism is prompted by seeing all this ‘talking’ to each other as a threat. They are quite right to do so because it may well expose the fragility of their own democratic principles. All I can say is to tell them to read, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, and they might just see that it really is better to communicate, rather than to remain silent.

Dacier