scottdisco
rip this joint please
having now read the entire thread i see Nick_G just said everything i said, except far shorter and better with his 'stream-consciousness' shout.. 
Twitter?
- Thread starter Grievous Angel
- Start date
Grievous Angel
Beast of Burden
140 character post limits are really goo
just read your fisk tweet. nice one.
Patrick Dixon is like Polystyle in the futures thread on speed - lots of good info.
thoroughly enjoying African Proverbs.
i need to get some kind of procrastination award!!!!!
thoroughly enjoying African Proverbs.
i need to get some kind of procrastination award!!!!!
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Is wiley on twitter? Now that would be worth reading
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
thought that Clay Shirky quote was on the $ - as mediums get faster they get more emotional, less rational, less time to think before you act.
like the idea of minimal communication forcing people to say more w/less but in practice I'm sure 99% of it is embarrassingly stupid txt spk.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Everyone's talking about how instrumental twitter was in the Iranian movements over the past couple of weeks, but was it really? I wonder whether the movement just happened, and then was "tweeted" after the fact...
Which is a obvs a great use for Twitter, but still, I'm unclear as to how Twitter "caused" this..
Which is a obvs a great use for Twitter, but still, I'm unclear as to how Twitter "caused" this..
scottdisco
rip this joint please
no you're exactly right there Nomad.
four_five_one and Padraig, in particular, on the Iranian democracy thread, have been making this point consistently.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Zhao gives good Twitter. No obsessive entries regarding every last piss you need to take in a day, good links, and occasional reflections on something.
For some reason, not many of my friends are on it. But the ones who are seem to be superannoying with it, texting in updates like "having a drink, looking out the window!" and shit.
To be clear, Twitter came to the fore as other medias were fire walled , banned or silenced .
Hard to say what if anything was 'caused' by Twitter.
scottdisco
rip this joint please
i don't think anyone thinks it "caused" anything, just that it was one of the only ways to get what is/was happening out to the world, that's all. wasn't youtube used a lot for this too?
everyday i get emails so and so is now following you, and i have no idea who they are or how they found me. like that Patrick Dixon who's environmental and political tweets are totally awesome... he seems like a professional twitter-er with 15 or more well researched tweets a day (how does that work??) i wonder how he found me.
scottdisco
rip this joint please
yeah me too, P Dixon! he's great.
and sincere thanks for the African proverbs h/t Zhao, they're wonderful.
as for the "caused", i fear perhaps over on the Iranian democracy thread we all agree on a basic set of premises including the sort of reasoning i quote from Z above re Twitter, but some of our phrasing toward Twitter has been, perhaps overly so, robust.. ...it would be different if some of us were running around making over-inflated claims about it, but none of us are, tbf.
You can search for key word or trends which brings back tweets with the words you've specified. I posted a quote that mentioned the words "fitness centres" and then got followers who tweet about fitness for example.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
This has been discussed & dissected at great length so as Scott said I'll just refer you to the Iranian Democracy thread from I dunno, page 15 on or so.
but, very briefly - Twitter etc. didn't cause Iran's hideous economy, or its massive drug problem, or its enthrallment to a group of aging hardline clerics, etc
mos dan
fact music
where's chippy? i've followed and then un-followed a lot of grime mcs tbh.. too much fraff (i'm sure the same could be said about me).
twitter itself is fantastic tho imo: for links, for up to the minute news, for silliness - even for work www.twitter.com/danhancox
optimum
Poochie
Yeah it's great, have got plenty of good links/info/drugs through using it so far. I was wishing that Wiley was on it the other day...
four_five_one
Infinition
Yeah, I got a bit carried away by Twitter's role in Iran at first, which Padraig rightly picked me up on. Although in my defense I was thinking more of the potential of it, rather than the actual role it played, which wasn't really clear at the time.
Anyway, here are three skeptical articles about it (apropos Iran):
http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/americas-iranian-twitter-revolution/
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2009/tc20090617_803990.htm
http://www.digiactive.org/2009/06/20/iran-beyond-headlines/
I suppose it's more interesting to look at how it's affected how we (those not in Iran) perceive events, rather than any effect it's had in Iran wrt organizing protesters etc - where it was used but just as one tool among many (i.e. not to the extent some of us would've liked to think).
The internet is obviously the biggest technological change in media and the way overseas news is reported since Vietnam, where the televisual spectacle provoked mass protest; but most of us still get our news thru third party sources, online newspapers etc. Twitter differs in that it appears to give unmediated access to the thoughts and feelings of those actually involved, and is - because of this - so much more brutal and affecting, now that we're so cynical and apathetic toward worldwide events as reported by the traditional mainstream media. It's the interactive aspect that appeals -- the 'participant voyeurism' noted in the first link. The participant aspect is illusory, of course, all your clicking and twittering is doing is adding to the background noise, glorying in the spectacle, not liberating Iran...
Anyway, here are three skeptical articles about it (apropos Iran):
http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/americas-iranian-twitter-revolution/
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2009/tc20090617_803990.htm
http://www.digiactive.org/2009/06/20/iran-beyond-headlines/
I suppose it's more interesting to look at how it's affected how we (those not in Iran) perceive events, rather than any effect it's had in Iran wrt organizing protesters etc - where it was used but just as one tool among many (i.e. not to the extent some of us would've liked to think).
The internet is obviously the biggest technological change in media and the way overseas news is reported since Vietnam, where the televisual spectacle provoked mass protest; but most of us still get our news thru third party sources, online newspapers etc. Twitter differs in that it appears to give unmediated access to the thoughts and feelings of those actually involved, and is - because of this - so much more brutal and affecting, now that we're so cynical and apathetic toward worldwide events as reported by the traditional mainstream media. It's the interactive aspect that appeals -- the 'participant voyeurism' noted in the first link. The participant aspect is illusory, of course, all your clicking and twittering is doing is adding to the background noise, glorying in the spectacle, not liberating Iran...
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
http://twitter.com/Mr_Andy_M
This had better be good.
(Actually, I suspect a good chunk of my use of it will consist in having 5-word conversations with my mum. Good times!)
This had better be good.
(Actually, I suspect a good chunk of my use of it will consist in having 5-word conversations with my mum. Good times!)