Just over 12 years ago I read an article about nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m and this new thing called Twitter. I worked at a small book publishing company of gardening and ag books. We wondered what the buzz was about this new bird thing and if I could engage our audience with it. Turns out, I could.
Shortly thereafter other book publishing companies took notice of our rapid growth in popularity and I was offered a book contract with O'Reilly (for little money but a lifetime of personal pride) for a book about ways to use Twitter as more than just an automated RSS feed.
I wrote the book. It turned out to be shit cuz I wrote it in the week before my wedding in a Mountain Dew-fueled string of all-nighters. But, I always liked the preface I wrote for it.
I share it here because I've been inspired by nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a and her longer format notes, nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx and his podcast rallying cries, and the rediscovery of kindness online in the #nostr community--which is why I think the #nostr community will appreciate the sentiment within.
But, most importantly, I share it here because after coming to understand the importance and significance of #nostr--especially in the wake of Twitter's devolution--I see now that the conclusion I came to 12 years ago, while sweet, is totally fucking wrong.
Read on to see what I mean.
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Preface
At nearly every conference I attend I meet people who tell me, “I have no use for Twitter. You can’t say anything in 140 characters. I’d rather have a real conversation.” Obviously—as I’m the one writing this book—I feel differently. So, to all the doubters and skeptics, I offer the following story:
My grandfather—like so many grandparents—moved to Florida when it came time for him to retire. His neighborhood was carved out of fields of orange groves and tucked in beside rambling golf courses. His street was a flat street in a grid of flat streets. His house was a single-level brown adobe home in a row of single-level brown adobe homes. At the end of his driveway was a green mailbox. At the end of every driveway was a green mailbox.
We would visit him nearly every winter, and as my dad drove the family van through the flat streets—even as a small child I had an easy time picking out my grandfather’s house from all the rest. His was the only one with a 50-foot radio tower in the backyard.
My grandfather was a HAM radio operator. He had received his operator’s license in 1930 when he was just 15 years old. As a teenager, he taught himself how to build his own radios out of spare parts. He then served during WWII in a communications unit, and after the war he continued to communicate with other “HAMmers” all over the world. Upon retirement, he moved to this adobe home and set up his own radio room complete with his own radio tower outside the window.
In the late evenings during our visits he would excuse himself and shuffle down the hall to his radio room for his weekly dates with his radio buddies. Sometimes I’d sit beside him—marveling at the knobs and lights all around the cluttered room—while he tapped out his messages in Morse code, laughed, and waited in anticipation for the beeps and boops that would reply.
“Oh marvelous!” he’d say. “Janice had her baby!”
I—being six—didn’t know Janice and didn’t care much that she’d had her baby. But I could study for hours how these sporadic beeps and boops somehow triggered outbursts of joy and happy tears from my grandfather.
I would learn many years later that my grandfather was speaking to a man in New Zealand named John. They met over the airwaves and quickly became friends while tapping back and forth to each other about their love of radios, golf, family, and of course, new babies.
Every week my grandfather would shuffle down the hall in the late evenings for his scheduled chat with John who—at that same time—was shuffling out of bed to start his day in New Zealand.
When my grandfather passed away in 2007 it had been over twenty years since I last sat with him in his radio room. At the time of his death he held the longest continuously-active HAM radio operators license in the United States—77 years.
In a long procession on a sad day, we drove past the orange groves and down the flat streets to the funeral home. Family and friends filled the room. Many of whom I hadn’t seen in years and many of whom I’d never met before. And, in introducing myself to some of the folks, I met a small older man who stood alone at the back of the room. “Hello,” he said in a funny accent. “I’m John.”
Real relationships have been built on forms of communication offering far fewer than 140 characters. The human animal is capable of extracting real and meaningful information from countless forms of communication—whether it’s Morse code, or a wink, a nervous foot, a billboard, or even a “tweet.”
The content of your communication is important—not what carries it.
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It turns out, the carrier of your communication is just as (and often more) important than the content. I was wrong. Stay free #nostr. Thank you for your integrity.
#freedomtech #essay #plebchain
