Listening to @yourewrongabout re 1980s Senate hearings: not only did info travel differently before social media, but in linear media era if you didn't *tune in* at the right moment or buy *that day's paper* you just missed it & could never retrieve it after the fact

If you didn't go to the movie theater on time, you *missed the movie* until it showed up bowdlerized on tv (pre-1980s)

If you didn't buy that day's paper, you *missed* the article! Maybe you could try digging around in newspaper piles in the local library but good luck with that

And if you didn't *tune in at the right time* you missed that day's news, that day's episode of your favorite show--never to be retrieved or seen or viewed again

What I find so interesting listening to @yourewrongabout is hearing TV clips etc of events I witnessed decades ago but I had never heard since--because, back then, it just wasn't possible to replay!

So when I try to explain this to my students, I realize it's like trying to describe how horses and buggies were harder to travel in than automobiles--obviously true, but unfathomable for those who never experienced it

Linear media is to our digital networked media like the horse & buggy were to the automobile: once left behind in historical memory, it will be just impossible to understand how people coped back then

Even today it's hard for me to remember all the clipping files I kept of newspaper articles--because, once gone, that newspaper article was almost entirely irretrievable without hours spent in a library

And as someone raised on linear broadcast TV, I still recall the first time I saw videotape play *in reverse*--so shocking because I had never seen film/video *in reverse* before--all film/video had existed in a perpetual present, vanishing from sight after being seen

So hearing tv clips from decades ago on @yourewrongabout is also amazing because someone recorded that stuff to be retrieved later--and now that is so normal a procedure it's hard to remember that most of us back then never had that opportunity to record or retrieve

If you didn't buy a magazine when it was available on the newsstand, you couldn't buy it later! Still grateful to my grandmother who stored a decade's worth of LIFE magazines in the attic--probably started me on my media hoarding/historical path...