I think that I get twitter \u2013 and there\u2019s not much to get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in the day, I was a luddite who thought that \u201cthe web\u201d was just a massive ego trip. Seriously \u2013 I put up a web page on one of the umich servers in, like, 1994 \u2013 and wondered what the fuss was about. That lasted until a professor insisted that we get homework from his web page and turn in assignments by creating a (primitive by today\u2019s standards) password protected page and giving him the password. That was when I realized that \u201cthe web\u201d means \u201canyone can publish any document, instantly, for free.\u201d The power of intellectual production was truly in the hands of the masses. That\u2019s f-ing revolutionary, and we\u2019re still dealing with what it means when \u201ceveryone\u201d really seriously has the power of the press. Web 3.0? This is still web 1.0 people \u2026 we\u2019re just finally hitting the knee of the exponential adoption curve on internet access<\/strong> in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seriously. Did you hear the whinging last week about the digital conversion of TV? There\u2019s a revolution going on \u2013 but it\u2019s not twitter \u2013 it\u2019s people finally realizing that you don\u2019t have to own a million bucks of metal to broadcast yourself to everyone on the planet<\/strong>. The revolution is the stuff that is dreaming. Twitter is John the Baptist to his Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay seriously \u201ctweeple,\u201d shut up a second and let me talk. Put down the crackberry when I\u2019m talking to you. Some thoughts take more than a sentence or two. If your philosophy fits on a bumper sticker, your philosophy sucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So then I started a livejournal, against my own better judgement, because this is just another ego trip. Why would I want the whole world reading my diary? Except that it turns out that the whole world doesn\u2019t read my diary. There are maybe 30 of you, and I know the majority of you in real life. So while it\u2019s theoretically possible<\/strong> for the whole world to read my blog \u2026 they don\u2019t. Google skims me, and I occasionally get a hit from some real human who is constantly searching for (for example) co-working or something. This one time, I posted about giving a talk at a conference and a reporter covering the conference put 2 and 2 together and linked me in his article. So it\u2019s there<\/strong>, but it\u2019s not really the way the thing works. LJ at least makes a nod at concepts like privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Facebook \u2013 same story. Except that the posts are shorter. Instead of having to read paragraph after angst laden paragraph, I can offer up a sentence or two in a status. \u201cGot married.\u201d \u201cHad a kid.\u201d \u201cCat dying.\u201d That sort of thing. Once again, there\u2019s a theoretical possibility that people could scope my statuses all the time \u2013 but they don\u2019t<\/strong>. It\u2019s a vehicle for me to communicate with (here\u2019s the key) people who I already know. I\u2019m not talking to the world \u2026 I\u2019m talking to a few friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Implicit in both my blog and my facebook status is the fact that I know I\u2019m talking to a small-ish audience. While both facebook and LJ give me delusions of my own globe-spanning importance, the reality is that we\u2019re a single monkeysphere talking to itself. Maybe 200 of us. Tops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Twitter is different: It runs under the assumption and the reality that I truly intend every \u201ctweet\u201d to go out to the whole fucking world \u2026 which just ain\u2019t true. I have aspirations that the whole world will hear some of the things that I have to say \u2026 but it\u2019s sure as hell not my stupid little posts that amount to me saying \u201chi, I still exist, and my butt kinda hurts today.\u201d When I speak to the masses, it will use the same miraculous publishing power that was available to me in 1994 \u2013 and it will @not #include $txt @abbrviations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I preach, I intend to spellcheck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost every time I post to twitter, some random ass web robot will say \u201chi\u201d to me. Sometimes it\u2019s a spammer who wants me to look at their product (hello \u201cBoston Bread Company\u201d). Other times it\u2019s some aggregator who undoubtedly has a product under the hood. The most recent of these was \u201cconference call tips.\u201d I tweeted that I was on a conference call and was suddenly on an aggregator for everyone in the world who wanted to know about \u2026 what \u2026 people who used the words \u201cconference call\u201d in a tweet? Because there\u2019s some sort of emergent global conversation going on about \u2026 conference calls? Give me a break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seriously. I get the difference \u2026 and I want none of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had been abusing twitter by deliberately blocking all those jackasses \u2026 and then I realized: I\u2019m fighting against the whole point<\/strong> of twitter. If I want to just \u201ctweet\u201d to my friends and family \u2026 I\u2019ll use facebook. Given that the stated purpose of twitter annoys the crap out of me \u2013 the only winning strategy may be to not play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Summary: I have no interest in being part of a chirping chorus of (to use the past tense): twats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I think that I get twitter \u2013 and there\u2019s not much to get. Back in the day, I was a luddite who thought that \u201cthe web\u201d was just a massive ego trip. Seriously \u2013 I put up a web page on one of the umich…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-privacy","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2038,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037\/revisions\/2038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}