"Quite fascinating that people feel the need to broadcast comments as they watch an event/entertainment/debate rather than process internally. Almost as if the tweet gives the moment a reality. Snarkiness is the cheap shot of those who don't expect their target to front them. "

Have you ever noticed that the networks encourage this tweeting? It provides them with instant viewer feedback. They can't buy that kind of information.

Anyone remember "Max Headroom"?

No Tweet, no Facebook, no texting, etc etc.........you couldn't pay me to!

Wow, this forum really is inhabited by a bunch of old, gray-haired Luddites. :)

M-m-m-m-max Headroom. Criminy, I still can't get that out of my head.

Someone once asked me if I tweet. Only after a Mexican dinner, I replied...

Year 2063 (already)
A grandfather and his little son Bob are speaking together.

Grandfa, why are you still using your old mobile ?

Bob, I prefer Tweeting, and my mobile is fine.
Look at your father, he is ill, the "DBC" (direct brain connection) to the net made him ill, like thousands other kids on our planet !

Yes, Grandfa, but today, we are using a new tehcnology that is safe, fast and easy : you just need a pen and a sheet of paper. Post office is much faster than in years 2000, and your mobile produces micro waves that has also been proven responsible of 1 million deaths !

Bob, you know, I'm too old : I've never learned how to write, this is why I still enjoy Facebook and Tweeter.

Grandfa, I can learn this to you, you will see how funny it is.

Bob, Thanks, but I think I'm too old now - should have learned this at school when I was younger.

Bon ,désolé, je ne parle pas assez bien l'anglais, mais je pense que vous saisissez l'essentiel de ma fiction !
What I mean, Facebook and Tweeter will be replaced sooner or later...

John_Cline: "gray-haired"Yeah, I wish! I'd also take Red or Green or . . Magenta!

BTW, can you just IMAGINE what the Luddites would be making of all this IT? Mind you they were about to see the "looming" of the Jacquard (see what I did there . . .. ?)

Grazie

Wow, this forum really is inhabited by a bunch of old, gray-haired Luddites. :)

Rubbish, I still have four black hairs.

Bon ,désolé, je ne parle pas assez bien l'anglais, mais je pense que vous saisissez l'essentiel de ma fiction !

Bien dit en anglais! Je peut comprendre parfaitement la petite histoire : )

I did a series of focus groups with high school students (grades 11 and 12) earlier this year about social media and the overwhelming responses were Twitter and Instagram. Only one student mentioned using Facebook. The general feeling about it was that, while it used to be a cool site, it had turned into something for their parents and grandparents :)

Mike

Anyone remember "Max Headroom"?

GREAT show (I'm old enough to have watched it on TV as it was first run) ... I was very happy when it was *finally* released on DVD a few years ago.

Back on topic ... I do Facebook, but do not Tweet ... and since I don't own a smartphone .. I don't Instagram either.

"In the 60's I was texting all over the world with a technology my parents couldn't understand - Ham Radio."

Steve, I saw a skit on The Tonight Show that Jay Leno called "Text vs. Telegraph". They had two older men dressed like late 1800's telegraph operators, and two young men, competing against each other to see who could send a short message the quickest. The older gents sent and received Morse Code. The young kids sent and received using Text Messaging. The older men finished first in far less time.

When I was a young man I had a Technician Class license (WB8ZGX). But the only equipment I could afford back then was a used 6 meter set. This turned out to be a waste of time because everybody had moved on to 2 meters. After a while I lost interest and let my license lapse. But I'll never forget the effort it took to learn the 5 WPM Morse Code requirement for my license.

I remember that on The Tonight Show, was very funny.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/80519289

[I]The young kids sent and received using Text Messaging. The older men finished first in far less time.[/I]When the first calculators hit the market in the early 1970s, I remember similar competitions between slide rules and calculators (vs. the HP-35) and between an abacus and a "four-banger" simple calculator. The old stuff was always faster, although it was tough to get ten digits of precision on those older devices.

[I]But the only equipment I could afford back then was a used 6 meter set.[/I]My brother and father were both hams (K9GCA/K9GCJ). When portable 2 meter became a big thing in the early 1980s I remember dad sitting there at family gatherings talking to some complete stranger in the corner of the room while the rest of us were talking to those in the room with us. As others already noted, it was a precursor to the isolation you see every day with people interacting with a glowing thing in their hand rather than the flesh and blood sitting five feet away.

BTW, I still have my dad's Hallicrafters SX-100 running off a dipole in the attic. It was refurbished by one of the retired Hallicrafters engineers, back in the mid-1980s and it is still hotter than it was when we bought it back in 1960.

A small town newspaper ran an editorial about how the highly technical fields were pulling young people to the big cities on the coasts. Communication was virtually instantaneous, people traveled at unimaginable speeds, the world was changing at an incredible rate.

It was written in the 1870's about the telegraph and railroads.

Imagine what our grandchildren will see.

And anyway, how do you format text in this forum, I can't find any way to italicise words?

GeeBax, see this post:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=521496&Replies=0

John Cline's link is that 3. sticky up there.

"Anyone remember "Max Headroom"?"

Oh wow. Shoulder pads, spiked hair, and people sitting on rubble huddled together watching a TV set used as a fireplace; and everybody had a British accent. What really impressed me was the level of technology that was depicted on the show. On screen they tracked a person and could switch from street video camera to building camera, all the while displaying a satellite like map view on their monitors. They were ahead of the technology curve on that stuff.

http://madison.thewikies.com/sonyforumpreview/Or, GeeBax.[/link]

Grazie

damn, telex has just run out of paper.....

RE: ham radio

I had been interested in ham radio for years (caught the bug reading my fathers old magazines .. but he never was a ham) Once they removed the code requirement for Technican class I got my license. I stayed a "no-code tech" for about 20 years even after they totally removed the code requirement from all classes.

A couple of years ago I finally upgraded to General and purchased a new HF (shortwave) radio. I still can not do morse code.

N1JDU

You never know when morse will come in handy. The Greenpeace activists locked up by the Russians said they communicated cell to cell by tapping on a water pipe that ran the length of the block. 'A' one tap, 'B' two taps, 'C' three taps, 'Z' 26 taps!! Probably never heard of Morse, but wish they had.