Things forgotten

In their search for forerunners of today’s blog, Miller and Shepherd uncovered these ancestors, among others – reality TV, the memoir, logs of ships (for the name, where the ship’s speed was measured by logs thrown overboard), diaries, clipping services, journals, etc. However, I here humbly assert two others: the radio talk show and the telegraph.

I am a NPR junkie and listen as often as I can to NIU’s station WNIJ with Diane Reim in the morning and Talk of the Nation in the afternoon. These hosts entertain Jack from Montana, Mary from South Dakota, Abdul from London, etc. I was first aware of these in the ‘60’s with Milt Rosenberg who’s still on WGN. Callers get the opportunity to “let it all hang out” on topics moderated by the hosts. Some regular callers have their “handles”, in CB parlance – oops, another example. There’s also short wave.

On Talk of the Nation , Monday, Tom Wheeler, the author of an op-ed in the Washington Post presented his research and took calls on his article “Lincoln Online – The Telegraph as a Window into the Mind of the 16^th President”.(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/11/AR2007021101169.html) We see Lincoln’s innermost thoughts through the nearly 1000 messages he sent via the new telegraph technology.