HEAR ME NOW
We will get a good laugh fifty years from now, when we look back at some of the things we are doing today. Or, you will, rather, because I will be long gone by that time.
During the last few years of the old century we had phase of “CB-itis”, it might be called. It became suddenly fashionable for everyone to have “Citizen's Band Radio”, or two... one installed as a base station at home, and all others in every movable car, truck or other vehicle they possessed, leased or borrowed. It all came about, I seem to remember, as a result our being urged to be ready for war which didn't start until we were in the new century. If the threat of an invasion was not real enough, people felt they needed CB radios in their cars for “safety” reasons. One never knew when they might be stranded in a wreaked vehicle a hundred miles from anywhere. The CB put you in touch with what you thought might help you in your predicament.
The truck driving portion of our nation's population - then growing to be a goodly number - took to it CB's feverishly and served as a model of sorts for “regular” users. The special code-like language the truckers came to use supplanted English as our national language to a large degree for a time and number, and combinations of them, such as “10-4” became the basic element of our linguistic culture. Very shortly the CB language slithered into being risque, feisty, smutty and bisque. Then, dirty, profane, obscene and permanently tainted. This helped to kill the entire CB craze. The countless thousands of antennae mounted on cars and trucks disappeared but modern technology was ready with another, more private mode of transportable communication. From Europe came the cellular phone and no spot in the civilikzed portions of the world has escaped its grasp.
We became a nation of one armed drivers quickly and completely. One hand on the steering wheel is enough The less apparent danger was the loss of mental association of drivers much more concerned with their phone conversation than with any traffic danger. Finland lead the pack, I think,and we're still trying to catch up on th Europeans ownership of cell phones. Together with the E-mail facility offered by computers in our homes and offices “cell-phone-ism” has clobbered the First Class mail tonnage at the U.S Postal Service.
The tiny communication wonder - wireless and world-wide - at now mutating into becoming camera, VCR, TV and computer with e-mail.
And we thought the CB craze was big!
A.L.M. July 24, 2003 [c464wds]
