Amy Gahran's Public Library

When you give up on calling and just send send a text, you become part of what I call the Asynchronous Nation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with asynchronicity. It’s just very different. It’s the biggest change in human, electronic communication since the phone replaced the telegram, since synchronicity began in other words, over a century ago.

Personally I don’t mind. I’m more productive when communication occurs on my schedule. And I find I can do more of it. Certainly the President likes it — he feels about his Blackberry as kindly as the late Charlton Heston felt toward his rifle.

But it is different. And we are in transition. Some of us have already crossed over while most of us — you oldsters mostly — have not.

What I have learned since cutting the phone cord is that the Asynchronous Nation is a different place from the one I lived in last century. How different we don’t yet know. How different is it for you?

For Tyrell Coley, engagement mostly means entertainment. In December, the 21-year-old New York City supermarket clerk launched a Twitter conversation about “(hash)femalesneedto.” The number sign was a “hashtag” that allowed others to label their tweets and join the discussion.

Within a few hours, (hash)femalesneedto was the top trending topic on Twitter meaning more of the site’s 17 million users were talking about it than anything else. Most comments came from black users and focused on relationships, advising women to do things like “learn sex is not love” and “learn how to love themselves.”

“There’s always something happening on Twitter, some drama, people talking about something,” says Coley. “Twitter is a great social network to kill time. When you’re bored, get on Twitter. Next thing you know you’ll be out of work or whatever. Twitter makes my day go by. That’s why I’m on almost every day.”

Coley is black, and so are most of his 3,756 Twitter followers. So are about 25 percent of all Twitter users, roughly double the percentage of blacks in the U.S. population, according to a February 2010 survey by Edison Research and Arbitron.

Many of Twitter’s trending topics have been fueled by black tweets. Coley has been responsible for several (hash)youcantbeuglyand and (hash)dumbthingspeoplesay also sprang from his iPhone. He has a desktop computer at home, which he used to apply for his supermarket job. But he uses his phone for 80 percent of his online activity, which is usually watching hip-hop and comedy videos or looking for sneakers on eBay.