Newspeak Technology

[lame54]

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/127623/twitter_nation_has_arrived%3A_how_scared_should_we_be/

This has all happened very fast. It was less than three years ago that Twitter hatched as a harmless Web 2.0 curio modeled on Facebook's status-update feature. Twitter offered people a forum devoted exclusively to short blog entries known as "tweets," most of which answer the company's tagline question, "What are you doing?"

By mid-2008, the San Francisco-based site was garnering feature coverage in national magazines and batting away $500 million buyout offers. With nearly 6 million users and counting, it is now on a Plaguelike pace to obliterate last year's growth clip of 900 percent. Twitter is growing so fast that 2009 may come to be known not as the year America swore in its first black president or nationalized the banks, but the year America learned to think and communicate in 140 characters or fewer.

[deadmessengers]

1. Someone's never heard of SMS before, apparently.

The rest of the world (especially the 95% of the world that isn't in the USA) has, though - and they've been using 140-character-or-less messages to communicate for about a decade now.

[lame54]

22. and hasn't it been a great decade?

[salvorhardin]

2. The author clearly doesn't understand what makes Twitter so useful

Clive Thompson writing for Wired and the New York Times however does.

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

“It’s like I can distantly read everyone’s mind,” Haley went on to say. “I love that. I feel like I’m getting to something raw about my friends. It’s like I’ve got this heads-up display for them.” It can also lead to more real-life contact, because when one member of Haley’s group decides to go out to a bar or see a band and Twitters about his plans, the others see it, and some decide to drop by — ad hoc, self-organizing socializing. And when they do socialize face to face, it feels oddly as if they’ve never actually been apart. They don’t need to ask, “So, what have you been up to?” because they already know. Instead, they’ll begin discussing something that one of the friends Twittered that afternoon, as if picking up a conversation in the middle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Also see Thompson's piece in Wired: How Twitter Creates A Social Sixth Sense
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson

Believe it or not, Twitter has been essential to me for making real life contacts in a new city. One of my best real life friends now I met on Twitter. Everything the author complains about is either due to his ignorance about what Twitter actually is, or why they chose the limits they did, or due to his inability to see that rather than supplanting old media, the old media is merely trying to learn how to integrate a new technology. Sometimes they do it badly and sometimes they do it well. Twitter is hardly a replacement for full length news articles, but then that is what hyperlinks are for. To link your Twitter followers to the featured content. I also find it ironic that Alternet published this since Alternet's use of Twitter consists of nothing but dumping its RSS feed to Twitter early every morning. Not exactly an effective use of the technology.

[ThomWV]

3. I would describe your observation as incredibly perceptive

Possibly the 1st response to your post does not understand the deeper meaning in your title. Newspeak indeed it may be. The essay on politics and the English language tells best.

[Book Lover]

4. Good thing I just showered

Reading that article saved me from having to blow dry my hair. Jeez!

on edit: As the parent of a child on the spectrum, I am offended by the casual and inaccurate use of "autistic culture" in the article. Another reason to discount this piece.

[Odin2005]

10. I'm on the spectrum and I thought it was stupid and ignorant. n/t.

[Edweird]

5. Ed. Note -- Twitterers invited to respond to this article in the comments or on AlterNet's Twitter

feed.

For some reason I find that amusing.

[ThomWV]

6. Here is a paragraph of more than 140 characters that is worth reading.

"'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well -- better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning, or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words -- in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that ..."

[Posteritatis]

7. Yawn, yet another "I don't get this so it has to be evil" Luddite thread

Not quite as good as the one claiming Twitter's a Republican plot, but sweet holy Christ on a pogo stick are people eager to read foulest evil into every new online fad these days. I mean, gee whiz! I'm stuck with a 140-character limit for SMS! That obviously means that I'm going to abandon complete sentences in all other media! And also that I'll use something with a 140-character limit for expressing complex thoughts!

Give me a fucking break.

I can only imagine the hatefest that would've been aimed at, say, Youtube had it only showed up in 2007 or something. Or instant messaging. Or, y'know, the internet itself.

[Odin2005]

12. It's probably out-of-touch Boomers that believe the "young people are stupid" BS peddled...

...on the MSM and spewed by polemicists with an axe to grind. Same with that BS a year ago claiming that us 20-somethings were a bunch of narcissists. Of course, it's always BOOMERS saying OTHER GENERATIONS are narcissists, which is rich. Projection, anyone?

[Posteritatis]

13. Oh, we are often stupid. I just dispute stupidER. ;) (nt)

[Odin2005]

15. LOL! :-) You mean "More stupid" ;-)

:evilgrin:

[Posteritatis]

19. The real question is, did I just under*mine* or under*score* my point? (nt)

[Odin2005]

21. underSCORE. :-)

[lame54]

23. I believe it's "Unsmart"

[girl gone mad]

14. "Here's Sanchez Twittering to his viewers last week:

"anybody got anything real good out there, btw.. thanks for tip on dentist kid.. wow that funny!"


Idiocracy, here we come.

[Warren DeMontague]

17. It's the worst thing to happen to the human mind since the telegraph.

Clearly. Stop.

[Posteritatis]

20. this poster promoted to rank personal hero stop hopefully point delivered stop (nt stop)

[blogslut]

8. Microblogging is new, well sort of.

I see it as more of an enhancement to networked, digital communication, or what ever we call it. As I explained to someone else, text-based digital communication isn't going anywhere anytime soon. We like our newfound reach with bonus anonymity. Obviously there are some who prefer one mode over another but I think most of us favor a mix of texting, microblogging, reading, commenting on blogs and posting in message board forums like this one.

Naturally, there's the rule of tl;dr when it comes to digital text, but I bet you a nickel that more people are reading than they were 20 years ago. I've known folks that never read anything after they graduated high school/college. No books. No newspapers. Perhaps magazines with lots of pictures. Now, those types text each other, surf the web, use Instant Messaging software and probably belong to good old message boards.

In the time line of the Interweb, microblogging is relatively new. Remember in 2004, when blogging groked fullness and became a media buzzword, even though bloggers had been blogging a good few years before? Microblogging is roughly three years old. It's 'caught on', so to speak.

I congratulate Twitter on being ahead of the game and creating a new platform for digital communication. Twitter is almost real time. It's convenient. It's user-friendly. However, is it only a part of all the fresh ways we're interacting with each other.

As I told this DUer, look at where we're at. DU is a community portal/social networking whatever, but the engine that drives this place is this message board. Message boards are old school, originating with Bulletin Board Systems, which proceeded the World Wide Web for a long damned time. And yet, message board communication thrives to this day. One has to admit that while individual posts may be short, reading multiple threads, or just the headlines, processes more than a mere 140 characters.

I guess what I'm saying is: Twitter is the new kid on the block but it is an additional form of digital communication. not the only form. The end.

[Odin2005]

9. "Oh no, these stupid kids are gonna be the ruin of civilization!!!"

That is what every elder generation says, and it's always BS. This sounds like the typical "those kids are growing up stupid" rant.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. ITEOTWAWKI

AIFF.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3CmXGKXOmk

[leftstreet]

18. "and I feel fine"

[BlooInBloo]

16. Not this shit again...

Yes, we understand that you old folks don't get it. You don't have to say it over and over and over.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5107710