(empo-tymshft) Breaker breaker - what's your hashtag? #70scbflashback

C. W. McCall had been taking it easy for the last several decades. No, he hadn't been listening to weirdo electronic music that sounds like a danged parade. And no, he hadn't been doing advertising or some such. The real C. W. McCall had taken his earnings and bought himself a cabin out West, and pretty much stayed there (except when he went into town), talking to people on his beloved CB radio. Not that there were many people talking on the CB radio any more (C. W. didn't know it, but the FCC hadn't updated its CB web page since 2003), but C. W. still liked to chat a bit.

Then one day C. W. lingered in town a little bit, and he got to talking to some kid who was playing with a calculator. Or at least it looked like a calculator.

"Ell oh ell!" said the kid.

"What's that you got in your hand, son?" asked C. W.

"It's an eye phone," said the kid. "I'm on Twitter right now."

"You're a twitter?" asked C. W. "Or is a twitter a thing?"

The kid showed the device to C. W. Once the kid figured out that C. W. wasn't all that knowledgeable about smartphones, or even computers, the kid explained the nature of Twitter. Strangely enough, the kid realized that the old guy was very familiar with communication services that allowed people to talk publicly with each other - even if C. W. kept on worrying about the text entry input ("Won't that force you to take your eyes off the road?" he kept on muttering).

C. W. was impressed that Twitter allowed you to talk with people thousands of miles away (rather than just the one to five miles supported by C. W.'s current service), and was impressed with the number of people on the "channel" (the kid happened to be following about 2,000 people, so his feed was pretty active). And C. W. was impressed with the evolution of acronyms that allowed concepts to be communicated quickly. In fact, the new service even dispensed with the need to ask "What's your 20?" since the location could automatically be published (unless you didn't want the smokeys to know where you were).

But the part that really impressed C. W. was the concept of hashtags.

"So," asked C. W., "if a few friends want to publicize something, all that they have to do is agree to use the pound sign and a certain word, and then anyone can find out about the thing?"

"Sure," replied the kid, who showed C. W. a search for #oow11.

[NOTE: IF YOU'RE READING THIS POST TEN YEARS AFTER I WROTE IT, THIS PARTICULAR HASHTAG REFERRED TO ORACLE OPENWORLD 2011, A CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY THE ORACLE CORPORATION IN SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. CALIFORNIA IS A STATE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. SO IF CALIFORNIA HAS FALLEN INTO THE OCEAN BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, THAT'S WAS I'M TALKING ABOUT.]

"Hmm," said C. W. who then scrawled this word on a piece of paper.

#70scbflashback

P.S. Obviously I am not the first person to place Twitter in a timeline with citizens band radio. For example, James Poniewozik of TIME wrote a piece on this earlier this year. Here's an excerpt:

For critics of Twitter et al., the CB comparison is meant to diminish social media as a fad with little actual value. But the analogy is unfair — to CB radio. Sure, for most polyester-clad hobbyists with CBs in their living rooms, the radios were essentially electronic pet rocks. But for truckers in the pre-GPS, pre-cell-phone era, CB was very useful: it was an ad hoc micro-news network. Drivers on a stretch of highway could share word about gas availability during the energy crisis or speed traps in the days of the 55 m.p.h. (about 90 km/h) limit. No one made them do it; there was no payoff except karma and the feeling of connectedness on a lonely job. And as each traveler went his or her separate way, this news network would dissolve and new ones would form along another stretch of road.