This is... fascinating. Reminds me of a story i heard once...
...Seems that years ago, back in the heady days following the Rural Electrification Act, those crazy kids out in the hills of Southeast Minnesota had a rather interesting way of communicating at a distance. They'd strung stout copper wires from poles along the road, and with the aid of a device installed in each home, could send messages through it. Since these were busy, hard-working folk, they couldn't exactly stand around watching an LCD screen to find out who was talking (plus, LCD screens didn't exist) so they hit upon a rather unique solution: each user had a custom "ring", and a bell attached to each communication device would reproduce this "ring", thereby informing all users of who the current message was intended for (strikingly similar then to your @username system). Of course, anyone was free to listen in, and many interesting occurrences came about because of this...
Of course, like all good things, this system came to an end. The Man ripped out all of their nice stout copper cables, and replaced them with buried, insulated wire - and a separate circuit for each home. Now deprived of their means of common communication, this formerly-vibrant community, degenerated into sets of isolated families, and for many years the only reminders of what once was were the remains of the copper wiring strung up in pastures and electrified for the containment of cattle.
Now, with DSL and Twitter, a new day is dawning... (or, you know, something)
Paul Watson
· 2 years ago
Crikey, Twitter stole the idea!
Thanks Shog, that is interesting. Now, go be a twit would you please, I'd love to know what you ate for breakfast.
Bernie Goldbach
· 2 years ago
Say what you will about its banality. Twitter has written my last two technology news submissions for me and that means real money in my pocket. When tech pays, it's fine with me.
lauranen
· 2 years ago
Agree totally with you Paul, but I'm a recent convert. At first I used to get annoyed with having to listen one half of the conversation, but soon I realised that @username actually makes a) following that particular conversation easier and b) finding new interesting contacts in Twitter easier. And man I wish someone would write content like that in my comments.. :)
All Comments
...Seems that years ago, back in the heady days following the Rural Electrification Act, those crazy kids out in the hills of Southeast Minnesota had a rather interesting way of communicating at a distance. They'd strung stout copper wires from poles along the road, and with the aid of a device installed in each home, could send messages through it. Since these were busy, hard-working folk, they couldn't exactly stand around watching an LCD screen to find out who was talking (plus, LCD screens didn't exist) so they hit upon a rather unique solution: each user had a custom "ring", and a bell attached to each communication device would reproduce this "ring", thereby informing all users of who the current message was intended for (strikingly similar then to your @username system). Of course, anyone was free to listen in, and many interesting occurrences came about because of this...
Of course, like all good things, this system came to an end. The Man ripped out all of their nice stout copper cables, and replaced them with buried, insulated wire - and a separate circuit for each home. Now deprived of their means of common communication, this formerly-vibrant community, degenerated into sets of isolated families, and for many years the only reminders of what once was were the remains of the copper wiring strung up in pastures and electrified for the containment of cattle.
Now, with DSL and Twitter, a new day is dawning...
(or, you know, something)
Thanks Shog, that is interesting. Now, go be a twit would you please, I'd love to know what you ate for breakfast.