Eyeball Cards: The Art Of British CB Radio Culture by William Hogan and David Titlow offers a visual history of a particularly esoteric phenomenon, the production of “eyeball cards” CB radio enthusiasts shared with each other when they met in person.
The more eagle-eyed of you might have noticed I’ve been enjoying a brief sabbatical from this place. Now, I’m eager to move this post beyond just one of those “I haven’t been posting for a while” posts or one of those “Here’s a bit of a holding message, as I might not be posting a while” posts. There is probably more to it than that. Plus, those posts, certainly when executed by me, aren’t that interesting. The draft post I’ve since scrapped for being boring, self-indulgent and basically pointless is evidence enough of that. This is no guarantee that this post will be any less boring, self-indulgent or pointless. But bear with me. Read the rest of this entry »
I remember as a kid being on holiday and going to some sort of country fête-type thing. On one of the stalls was this guy with a CB radio. I was fascinated by the idea that from this one box this guy could communicate with people from around the world. He asked me to name a country and said he’d try to find someone to talk to from there. I said Tristan da Cunha, and he unsurprisingly couldn’t find anyone. I wasn’t a smart arse, I promise. I just liked Tristan da Cunha for some reason. And I liked the idea of speaking to other people over the radio. I liked the handles they used, the anonymity and the freedom.
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It is a point that has made before, and has no doubt been made in a more eloquent way, but the internet is full of people presenting something that someone else has actually produced. Much of what the internet churns out is essentially repeats of something that has already been churned out on the internet. I’m not getting on my high horse here, it is second nature for most of us. We share things on Facebook. We retweet. We reblog on Tumblr and WordPress. We embed videos and songs and photos from other people.
Those of you with a WordPress blog will have no doubt received their funkily designed Annual Report cataloguing your 2012 year in blogging. For those who don’t blog, or at least don’t blog through WordPress, the report collates all the relevant data relating to blog activity and visitors and all that kind of stuff. It is a nice feature as it offers an opportunity to reflect on how you are doing with your blogging, look at what you’ve achieved in terms of how many people you’ve reached in the big, bad world and consider the sheer quantity of stuff you’ve thrown up on the internet. Read the rest of this entry »
Wait until next year 