Thursday, July 19, 2007
Twitter 2: The Defence
There were some protests in response to my dismissal of the social networking site Twitter. So, fair-minded as ever, I bring you a defence of this new triumph of hyper-connectivity. Clive Thompson argues that, using Twitter, he began 'to develop an almost telepathic awareness of the people most important to me.' He goes on, 'Twitter and other constant-contact create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.' Hmmm, well, yes. But Thompson does then admit that Twitter can be a 'massive time-suck'. Exactly. Twitter consumes your days with contact. But other people, when they are there all the time, are hell. Twitter creates a constant state of being interrupted. Why, therefore, is it not simply a massive increase in the power of one of the most irritating and enervating aspects of the modern world?
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I don't know. I've never been there and the more I hear the less likely that is to happen. It will live or die on its merit, like pot noodle and Showaddywaddy.
ReplyDeleteBoth of which live on (sigh)...
ReplyDeleteDo Showaddywaddy live on? I had no idea.
ReplyDeletewell they obviously did, and if there's one thing you can't kill it's an idea.
ReplyDeleteShowaddywaddy live on indeed. Can't wait for the concept album...
ReplyDeletethen I better make sure I don't book on a cruise in the next 12 months. (ha ha, what are the chances of that?)
ReplyDeleteBryan, I am with you 100%. We need less connectivity, not more. When people get together, bad things happen. Look at Live Earth!
ReplyDeleteAt least technology has moved human interaction to a venue where it can be moderated in favor of the introvert. Once the telephone made inter-contintental connectivity possible, the answering machine was an absolute necessary follow-on to satisfy the sane majority that had no intention of acknowledging every possible person who got the crazy idea into their head that they wanted to contact you.
The Twitter contimuum sounds to me like a bunch of insecure people who want to shed their own skins and merge into a collective identity, a la the Borg. Why are people so allergic to self-ness? I'll keep my selfness, my skin and my armored cloak of solitude, thank you! And while you're at it, get off my lawn!