Microblogging deja vu
A very bright and very funny planner once told me a story from his days as a teenager in Dalgety Bay. This was in the early 1980’s, at the height of the Citizen Band (CB) radio craze.
He’d made a “copy” (contact) with someone in the same “10-20″ (location). Having exchanged “handles” (nicknames) and some small talk, they agreed to use their radios to actually meet up.
Rather than simply agreeing on a specific rendez-vous point, they devised an intricate game whereby they gave each other frequent micro status updates over the airwaves - “Big Bear is heading west”, “Deputy Dawg is passing a playground”, “Big Bear is going down hill” - until they eventually met up on a grassy knoll next to the Tesco carpark. At this point, mission accomplished, it became sadly apparent to both parties that they had nothing else to say each other. So they mumbled goodbyes from inside their snorkel parkas and went their separate ways.
So let’s look again at the characteristics of the leading edge, coolest social medium of 28 years ago.
Its users contributed to the dialogue under the guise of funny pseudonymns.
It had an associated language made up of medium-specific codes and slang expressions.
Users invented reasons to communicate purely so that they could use the technology.
And they basically had little or nothing in common aside from their use of the same said technology.
Hmmm.