To me, superficial communication is to meaningful communication like weeds are to flowers or crops.
So you can understand my feelings about Twitter, whose very nature is designed to make weeds prosper.
Okay... so Twitter is now advertising. (Spamming, call it what you want. I certainly did not sign up for it.)
Here we go, this is what my spam mail said:
"...no matter what you’re into, there’s a Twitter for that."
"From the events everyone's talking about to the conversations around the neighborhood, connect to what matters most to you on Twitter."
Wow, that makes it sound very relevant, doesn't it?
It even makes it sound important. Like a vital service to humanity.
But I'll postulate that far from being comprehensive, this is actually very narrow.
It may be comprehensive for people whose horizons span from "what everybody is talking about" to "the conversations around the neighborhood".
And those have their place, fair enough.
But what about if "what I'm into" is Nietzsche's philosophy? Color theory? String theory? Fractal art? Camera optics? The French Revolution? The nature of consciousness? Shakespeare? Dadaist art? Modern architecture?
Try to discuss those subjects meaningfully in parts of 140 characters.
4 comments:
I think the idea is that 140 characters is enough to post a url and some tags. One of the problems is that Twitter has focused on following people, so I get all their tweets whether they are work related or family or outside interests. I can filter them out with third party browser add ons but Twitter hasn't advertised these well enough. A system where I could get tweets based on content might be useful but twitter haven't told me about it, if it exists. So I just stick with a few blogs and RSS feeds.
Try to discuss anything meaningful in 140 characters! Can it be done? I think not!
Ah, to tweet like a bird! The good thing about the bird is that it flies away and it's gone for good.. :-)
Oh, I don't know, I think it can be done. I don't know if it has because I'm not on Twitter. I wonder what Shakespeare could have done with 140 characters.
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