Thursday, May 14, 2009

Breaker breaker good buddy

Back in the late 70's, everyone suddenly got into CB radio. It was a very odd fad, and you could buy books that explained how CB radio worked, and how the jargon worked -- everybody spoke in code so that Smokey wouldn't be able to catch you on the flip flop. There were songs, movies, comics and t-shirts about CB.

My dad got a CB radio, and we hooked it up in our van and listened to truckers and other CB type people when we drove on vacation. We came up with a handle, a cool name that we could use when we talked over the radio.

CB stands for Citizens Band, and the whole thing was about regular people going on the radio and talking to the world, and listening to other people doing the same, joining an amazing conversation and creating a brand new kind of virtual social network, connected over vast distances.

It turned out that no one really had very much to say, and CB eventually dwindled away -- though I'm sure truckers still use it to communicate important info between themselves, as the medium did exist for a reason.

Twitter is CB radio all over again, aside from the part about it having some kind of valid reason to exist.

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