Sen. Daniel Inouye has seen more change on Capitol Hill than just about anybody there. After all, Inouye first arrived in Washington in 1959, the year Hawaii became a state.

A Roll Call article this morning examines how the infusion of mobile technology has blighted the congressional etiquette of the old days. One example the newspaper gives: When Sen. Al Franken, as he presided over the Senate, drew an “ahem” from a colleague for getting distracted by his BlackBerry. 

“When I did my chore of presiding, I can tell you that I never did side reading or BlackBerry work or what have you. I listened,” Roll Call quotes Sen. Inouye as having said. (Read the full article.)

The senator brought up the subject of technological change in an interview with DC808 over the weekend. Here’s what he told us: 

“I came at a time when there were no blogs, no Facebooks, no Twitters, no nothing. No Internet. They didn’t have a thing,” Inouye told DC808 on Saturday. “We had radio, three stations. And three TV stations. It wasn’t available all over the place because of the mountains. In Hawaii, if you happened to live on the other side of Koko Head, you got the ocean breeze but no news.”