Uncle TumaloHalloween 666 Series #3: The Death of Radio
When I thought about The Raven and quite a few poems and stories that Poe wrote where he suffers the loss of his young wife, I asked myself if I have lamented anything like that in my life. The answer is luckily, no. My relatives who passed lived a good life and a full life – so while sad, it felt natural and normal. I know from experience – when a young persons life is cut short that that is a much different story.
On a much lesser scale, there are era’s in my life that are over – which caused a wee bit of mourning on my part. The Era of Radio is one of them. Sure, it’s only a thing, and only technology I suppose – but it’s kind of interesting how important radio was in my life. It had serious social component that some young people have never or will ever experience. So – I guess I am lucky I got to experience radio as I did.
Today’s Imaginary Puppet Theater show highlights the death of radio coupled with Raoul Hausmanns 1918 Dada work, “The Spirit of Our Age”. He lamented post WWI technology and that senseless war. He lamented how the killing machines (tanks and mustard gas) plus war sparked by greedy capitalism seemed to dehumanize making people just a number.
I’d argue that Social Media is our eras “Soft Killing Machine”. It didn’t cause the Idiocracy we are experiencing in the US, but it sure enabled losers to have a voice and make a continued concerted effort to ruin the (arguably) greatest democracy the earth has seen.
Uncle Tumalo 
The Drake Equation is a highly speculative formula for guessing how many other civilizations are out there that we might be able to hear on the radio. The final component of the equation is L, a guess at how long a civilization might radiate detectable signals. There seem to be two primary reasons a civilization might cease to radiate detectable signals once it starts: the first is that its technology evolves to the point that high powered signals become superfluous; the second is that the civilization destroys itself.
I think we might actually be nearing the end of our “L window” but I’m not taking a stance on which of these reasons applies.
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Interesting. I think the power levels will be lower before we ruin ourselves. Satellite radio, which has no “romance” like high power low frequency stations is one form of radio that continues on just fine. What is interesting is that non ionospheric radio can get away with much lower power
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I think you are probably correct. In the old days, you needed high power to overcome the vast distances and lack of infrastructure. These days, due to frequency congestion, the imperative is actually to go as low power as possible so that you can reuse the same frequency over and over again nearby. But your cell phone is 40 dB down and your WiFi is 60 dB down from a 50 kW AM station. Better hope the aliens have “good ears.”
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