That morning, Mike Hall, a legendary character in the world of ultra-endurance cycling – multiple winner and record holder of the Tour Divide in the USA, winner of the World Cycle Race and TransAm Bicycle Race, and founder of the Transcontinental Race in Europe – was struck by an automobile and killed on the Monaro Highway, just inside the ACT. Hall was competing in the Indian Pacific Wheel Race (IPWR), Australia’s answer to the ultra-endurance races of Europe and North America.

Where they coexist, (and they needn’t) spoken and written language are tightly bound to the social and technological regimes that they animate. Technologies of writing – from hammer, chisel, and stone tablet, to ink and parchment or the modern keyboard – influence how specific systems of writing will emerge. One of the most interesting developments on the internet has been the emergence of the pound (#) symbol as a linguistic figure, for its use in hashtags. What exactly ‘#’ is, is not immediately apparent.