Random header image... Refresh for more!

All Your Twits Are Belong To Us

by Scott H. Payne

It appears that the Twitterverse has inexplicably gone down, leaving thousands of pundits adrift. There is no explanation yet provided on the Twitter main page, but it appears that you can update your own account, but cannot see the updates of those folks whom you follow.

I’ll admit that over the past two weeks, I have started using Twitter as a sort of aggregator of information posted by writers and bloggers I like to read and so this outage has me feeling kind of… unplugged. What I find kind of cool about the twitterfication of information sharing is how you can not only let people know about your posts, you can refer your followers to the post of someone you’re following, comment on those posts in real time, and drop in on a conversation on a particular post that two or more people you follow are having.

It brings a new degree of immediacy to the whole process of information sharing that goes a step further than blogging, but ultimately has to act as a support to blogging. Plus, it’s also one more degree of a personal experience. The comments and activities are very much person-to-person, as opposed to being mediated through a blog — even when that blog is run by one person with whom you are corresponding.

I’m not saying anything new or groundbreaking here, I know. The current outage just caused a moment of reflection on how we increasingly use new forms of technology in very post-postmodern ways that intertwine the subjective and the objective in interesting ways. Truth becomes a collective excavation of infinitely networked negotiations towards a reconciliation of acceptable perspectives that cohere to a felt experience. And all in 140 characters.

Bookmark and Share

Share and Enjoy
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Fark
  • Reddit
  • SphereIt
  • Yahoo! Buzz

Random Posts...

9 comments

1 greginak { 10.08.09 at 10:03 am }

“Truth becomes a collective excavation of infinitely networked negotiations towards a reconciliation of acceptable perspectives that cohere to a felt experience. ”

You have to much time on your hands or are stoned or both.

Scott H. Payne
October 8th, 2009 at 10:20 am

I’m at work, so stoned would be a bad idea on numerous levels.

Will
October 8th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

Heh. I wasn’t going to say it, greginak, but I had the exact same comment in mind.

2 Mike at The Big Stick { 10.08.09 at 10:04 am }

My concern with Twitter (and even traditional blogging to a degree) is that the speed at which it rolls out encourages off-the-cuff remarks that are probably best left unsaid. I also find that blog posts are becoming increasingly less influential on me as I move back towards long-form articles that present a lot more in-depth information. Time magazine…I missed you.

greginak
October 8th, 2009 at 10:12 am

I find the websites that put one paragraph per page, so that i have to click through numerous times just to read 500 words greatly irritating. Long form pieces are definitely not a strength of the internet.

Scott H. Payne
October 8th, 2009 at 10:13 am

Yeah, I hear what you’re saying and I think that is absolutely a valid point. The problem with any emergent technology is that we like to see it as the panacea for all that ails us in a given field/terrain. So blogging and new media will inevitably eclipse and render obsolete old media. Twittering will do the same to blogging and/or Facebook within the sphere of new media.

Really, I think the trick is to see all of these modes of inquiry as existing on a spectrum. The nodes they represent will light up a given subset of information/experience based on the paradigm they utilize (which is sort of a macro take on perspectives, given that we individually utilize different micro-perspectives to great difference and benefit, as well). As such, they shouldn’t be seen as inherently confrontational or in a zero-sum context, but rather, ideally, as working in a complimentary fashion.

Mike at The Big Stick
October 8th, 2009 at 10:20 am

I had to read that second paragraph three times and now my head hurts. You’re going to have to dumb things down for us Scott!

The way I process things is pretty simple: blog posts are for reading when I need a mental break for 5 minutes at work or when i’m forced to get on a 2-hour conference call that has absolutely nothing to do with me or my job. Long form publications are for the bathroom, waiting at the doctor’s office, or lazy Sundays. I don’t have any smaller bits of time to devote to Twitter.

Scott H. Payne
October 8th, 2009 at 10:31 am

All I’m really saying is that all these different ways of inquring into and sharing information will reveal different things to us via the different ways they operate.

They are all means of inquiring into the state of things and gathering and processing information, so they all have things in common (placing them on a spectrum), but that the particular way they operate on that spectrum (or incommon, but different) will wind up giving us access to information in different ways (ie. accessing different subsets of a larger pool of that information).

We’ll have different preferences for how we like to access and process information, as well as how we tend to interpret the particular subset of information (hence the reference to micro-perspectives: our own individual perspective on things). This gives us a unique subjective component to the process (your own input) and the neat thing about newer technologies is that they are bringin those subjective components into greater proximity (as opposed to sitting at home, reading an article on your own and going “Hmmm” after wards, possibly discussion with someone hours or days later).

That greater proximity doesn’t exclude the kinds of activities you describe as taking on more value to you. Indeed, in this light they do in some cases become more valuable as a part of an overall process of which these new-fangled technologies are ultimately parts (a meta-process).

But my end point is to say that the entangling of all this means that we don’t ultimately wind up in a postmodern cul-de-sac of no truth, but rather work together under the hospices of our limited processes to uncover and ultimately articulate (write, speak, act, etc.) as much about a felt experience (life as lived – another mode of inquiry) as we can. These highly networked technologies like Twitter add a fine-toothed component to that process that I find fascinating but limited.

But none of it has very much value if taken by itself.

3 Trackbacks { 03.18.10 at 6:20 pm }