The rate of change in technological developments is so rapid these days that, as an American study recently revealed, many of today’s teenagers do not know how to use a simple rotary telephone with a dial, so used have they become to portable phones that can, by means of the miracle of miniaturization, perform a myriad of additional functions– taking photos, texting, permitting access to the internet, and thus enabling users to find out where they are, to monitor traffic patterns ahead for pedestrians and motorists alike, and even performing financial transactions without visiting the bank– all undreamed of by yesterday’s telephone users. We are told that progress requires us to relinquish familiar methods of communication in order to benefit from the inevitable improvements in our lives made possible by these changes, and we soon forget what used to be second nature. Some of us can remember in their childhoods the thrill of hearing a familiar voice speaking for the first time by telephone from a faraway country never visited. The world suddenly seemed much smaller.
A mere sixty years ago, many teenagers interested in the wider world beyond their neighbourhoods would listen to international radio stations broadcasting from these faraway places. A friend in Grade 9 and I were two of those teenagers. My father had helped me put together a Heathkit short-wave radio receiver in the early 1960s. Together we installed an aerial on the roof of our house which brought these sounds so much closer. Instead of the soporific schlock of AM radio, with its insufferable combination of forgettable two-minute ‘hit’ tunes and nonstop advertising, I could hear announcers speaking Spanish, French, Russian, and, of course, more intelligibly, the lingua franca of the modern world, English, from all over the world. I would spend hours listening in bed late at night, when reception of short-wave radio signals seemed to be better, to rousing exotic music and foreign voices, a few of which I could actually understand. I heard recognizably American, Australian, English, and even South African accents. It was an escape from the smug small-mindedness of suburban obscurity. If you were sufficiently interested, you could write to the station originating the program, describing what you had heard, what you thought of it, the radio frequency on which you heard the program, and they would send you what was called a ‘QSL’ postcard to add to your own growing collection. A QSL card is a written confirmation of a two-way radiocommunication apparently still in use by ‘ham’ radio and CB (‘citizens’ band’) operators; I do not know if international radio stations still issue these, but they did then, and were a window into another world.
