BlogHer - Communication by default: This is progress? - Comments

Just another self-promotion tool?

Elisa Camahort — Sat, 19 May 2007 16:33:56 -0500

Lately I notice people using twitter to link to their latest blog posts.

I find this annoying.If you're in my friend list, then I probably already subscribe to your blog.

I mean, OK, if you wrote some brilliant thing about a very timely subject...plug away. BUt some folks blog a lot..and therefore twitter those posts a lot.

To me Twitter is nothing more than a big group back-channel chat...with about the same low signal to noise ratio.

But i still use it :)

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

Proximity

Bill Cammack — Sat, 19 May 2007 16:18:32 -0500

Twitter is useful when people are in physical proximity to each other.

Since people are still connected via cell phones, even when they're out, they can let you know what's happening or find out what's happening. If everybody moves across the street from a social function to a karaoke bar, that information can go out and be received by people who would like to join in immediately. It allows people to change plans on the fly or find out the "status" of their set of 'friends' at any given moment.

Also, since it remains archived, if you go to work for 8 hours, then want to know what's going on after work... all you have to do is scan the twitter pages instead of making calls and sending emails trying to catch up with people that might not answer their phones or be in front of their computers with access to their email.

It's useful when you can use this immediate information to sculpt your day IRL. Having said that, A LOT of twitter communication is "noise", as you mention. Some people find it useful to restrict their twitter friends to people that they actually know IRL so they don't have to sift through random, useless statements to get to the interesting information that's actually relevant to them.
--
Bill Cammack
Video Editor
BillCammack.com

One thing Twitter could do

kperfetto — Sat, 19 May 2007 15:55:34 -0500

One thing Twitter could do is make it easier to find people you know. As far as I can tell, there's no search feauture ala Flickr. (Or I'm just not seeing it.)

Five Dollar Camera

Hypnotizing Chickens

I like to think of myself as

Mommy Bits — Sat, 19 May 2007 08:40:34 -0500

I like to think of myself as a pretty tech-functional person but I really just don't understand the purpose of Twitter. What, send random thougths to an online site? I don't get it.

Link TextMommy Bits

Twiitter Free

Pam — Sat, 19 May 2007 08:30:00 -0500

Lest you think I'm just a cat sullenly gazing up at the tree full of conversation...

This is a great metaphor. Though Twitter seems more like a crowded cafeteria - you're standing there with your tray and there's all this noise...

I LOVE my communication tech toys. We were early adopters of video conferencing at my house. I love the DSLR/Blogging/Flickr convergent zone. I'm not quite done making out with my iPod, so much do I love it. But constant chatter with people I don't know? Meh.

Twitter isn't inviting to me. I think there may be a (sigh) divide I can't cross and that some of it is generational - younger tech users can filter through all the noise to find something they want in there whereas I can't be bothered.

When I was researching online dating, I spent some time in chatrooms. I don't get what's different about Twitter - beyond the sheer mass of users. I didn't like chat rooms either... too much noise. Maybe I'm too much of an internet introvert for this new phenom.

Nerd's Eye View

It's about choice

Lia — Sat, 19 May 2007 02:48:34 -0500

Thanks for writing about this whole wave of connectivity, which has evolved in the last years. Though I love the whole idea of everyone being able to use all of the new Web 2.0 tools to connect up to people in their lives, being connected to the world doesnâ€™t necessarily mean you are communicating. Some of my friends are so immersed in remaining connected and accessible to friends and family, there is no opportunity to share a long uninterrupted conversation with them.

Some of the best conversations occur when you sincerely miss another person, feel a deep yearning to reconnect, or you experience a shift from feeling alone to feeling lonely. I canâ€™t imagine anything more freedom robbing than being accessible to everyone the whole day through. This is why I own a cell phone but only use it when I travel and there is no public phone available. I want to be able to travel on a bus, meet a friend for a cup of coffee, etc. and just do that, without interruptions/connection from other people. I figure, if you are not there then you are not there.

lia from luebeck, germany

Author of the media safe 101 page on the Red Tent Blog and the personal yum yum cafe

Re: Communication by default

bobafifi — Fri, 18 May 2007 17:17:56 -0500

Great post Laura!
Very well written and thoughtful. A programmer friend of mine recently showed me the following clip on YouTube which your post reminded me of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

For what it's worth, I signed up with Twitter in August 2006 but just like Instant Messaging, have yet to start using it. I guess I don't get *why* I should or what it's supposed to do. Oh well...

Thanks,

-Bob
bobafifi.com

usedviolins.com

fluteplayer.net

Overloaded

kperfetto — Fri, 18 May 2007 12:45:03 -0500

I definitely feel overloaded, and at the same time slightly behind the curve. I've never been an early adopter of anything (I still don't have a digital camera or an iPod) and just when I think I've grasped the latest web wonder, something new comes along. Yeah, I Twittered (sp? word?) finally. It came in handy as a venting tool last night when I was trying to change my photoblog's design, I guess.

Apropos of nothing, but I was without power for four days last July and it was the most relaxing four days (despite not having any AC) I've had in about ten years.

Five Dollar Camera

Hypnotizing Chickens

Communication by default: This is progress?

Laura Scott — Fri, 18 May 2007 12:10:44 -0500

"Do you Twitter?"

Last week I asked my co-worker that, and he said with a groan, "I'm trying not to." Apparently I was not the first to ask. In fact, I don't think I know anyone who spends any significant amount of time online who hasn't been asked that question ... several times. I joined Twitter in March, tried using Jabber to connect (which works ... sometimes), downloaded Twitterific (which works ... mostly), and spent long, long hours trying to figure out how Twitter can in fact be relevant to my life. I found some bon mots, but despite the evangelizing wisdom I've seen out there, Twitter still strikes me much like its real-world analog: pleasant noise in moderate levels, but a cacophonous mass of Too Much in larger doses. (The Twitter server seems to agree.)

Lest you think I'm just a cat sullenly gazing up at the tree full of conversation, I have a theory....

Transportation 2.0

Way back when, travel was done only with a purpose. First you had a purpose, then you decided to travel. I recall reading Edvart Rolvaags frontier novel, Giants of the Earth, struck by the hardship of the day-to-day-life, living in a mudhut, working by hand on hard prairie soil. To go on a visit was an extraordinary effort, often taking days or weeks.

The transportation explosion changed things, and the habit that once had been the exclusive province of the aristocracy became the practice of regular folks: the social visit. First you decided to visit, then you figured out what to talk about, what to do.

Scribe 2.0

Before Gutenberg, written communication was just for the rich. But even as the printing press spread throughout the land, publishing was enough of an ordeal that you didn't undertake it without a purpose.

Then "desktop publishing" came along, and sending out a newsletter took only a ream of paper and a stamp (or intra-office mail).

Communication 2.0

Communications used to be a real hassle. The Napoleonic may have brought us War 2.0 in the form of artillery and total war, but communication dispatches had to be conveyed by ship or horse (or Horse 2.0) or semaphore. It might take months or years for a message to find its destination ... if it made it at all.

Then wireless came and changed everything, much to the displeasure of gentlemen businessmen accustomed to working three months out of the year and navy captains not wanting to hear from their admirals on a regular basis. Communication across great distances became easier, and while perhaps never totally casual, certainly much more common than before.

In the early days of the telephone, a similar thing happened for wire communications. Telegrams were expensive and involved a precious amount of work.

THEY WERE SHORT AND TO THE POINT STOP

The telephone came along and that started to change, but only slowly. First, the equipment was clunkly. It required shouting. It was useful only if you had an important message to transmit. Eventually wire improvements and handsets came along to change things. However, those of us old enough and having relatives in rural country may recall the party line, where several homes shared the same common line.

Oh, and when you got a call, other people did listen in.

Most of us, of course, grew up with many extensions in the house -- maybe even multiple phone lines. We'd call our friends, and then decide what to talk about. "Telephone ear" was a common malady back then. I don't think I'm alone in having left that behavior when I left adolescence. And when I left the Bells for cellular, it just got to be too costly to simply gab for hours.

But now there's instant messaging and VOIP. Jabber and Yahoo and Skype, oh my!

Information 2.0

Time was when it took effort and research to get information. Those of you old enough to have watched first runs of Bewitched will recall how getting any kind of information took quite a bit more than a twitch of the nose. You had to go to the library -- if there was a decent library around -- and look up possible leads in the card catalogue (using actual physical hand-typed cards) to find a book in the stacks -- if they had the book at all. If a book on the subject even existed.

And before libraries, all you had was gossip, the newspaper (if there was one), the clergy or, if you were of the proper caste, a university.

With the computer's bringing in the age of the "information explosion," all that changed in ways that it's too easy to forget just how uninformed we were before.

And isolated, for as hard as it was to get information, it was even harder to convey it. Try typing your essays on mimeograph "ditto" paper. You could usually get only a few dozen copies out of it, and the first thing recipients did upon receiving it was smell the paper, then read your text ... if the ditto came out clear enough in the first place. Blogging it ain't.

Now we reach the internet age where websites are conversations and every day it seems a new start-up announces a new way to communicate, and the world (or some of it, anyway) goes a-Twitter with delight. Sign up and communicate! Figure out what to say later!

It's changing the way we deal with each other and the world. It's communication by default.

Now, to be fair, not everyone is a-twittering their days away. As Pew reported last week, only 8% of American adults are "avid participants in all that digital life has to offer." And yet the report (pdf) also found:

27% of all respondents said they feel overloaded, and;

67% of all respondents said they like having so much information available.

The second question addressed whether people think computers and technology give
people more or less control over their lives â€“ or make no difference. In response:

48% of all respondents said computers and technology give them more control over

their lives.

16% say computers and technology give them less control over their lives

29% said these things make no difference.

...which seems to indicate that we aren't eccentric in our habits but rather are simply early adopters of what others will eventually embrace, or at least tolerate reasonably well.

Or so is the hope. Here we are, all talking to everyone, listening to everything, communicating without having anything in particular to communicate.

How are we to cope?

Tara Hunt offers a theory:

Personally, I think that there are many different types of brains in the world. Those that require linear, logical thinking. They do awesome on traditional IQ tests, SATs, LSATs, etc. They are great at focusing in on one piece of the puzzle and coming up with solutions. Information overload would be a huge distraction from the task, but they are usually quite adept at filtering it out. Then there are also those that think very abstractly and that can piece together seemingly unrelated data points to uncover new frontiers. These are the explorers, the radical free thinkers. They quite often have dropped out (or been kicked out) of post-secondary institutions. They often make no sense. Chris is one of these. Heâ€™s constantly distracted. Constantly. All over the place. But he thrives on too much information and comes out with these amazing visions that blow me away.

Me, Iâ€™m an information broker. I reside somewhere in between the logical and the explorer never quite able to pioneer or to compute. But Iâ€™m really good at understanding, then translating the information into more actionable items. The opportunist/entrepreneurial brain is similar to the information broker brain, but it takes that translation and creates tools that help people cope with both ends of the spectrum. All â€˜typesâ€™ of brains are necessary to get anything done, but the explorers are often undervalued and misunderstood (throughout history, they have often died penniless, having the opportunists and information brokers taking their ideas and profiting). I believe the outcry on the idea of continuous partial attention today is equally misunderstood and undervalued.

Confusion can be good. Lack of the feeling of security can be freeing. Embracing the chaos can open new doors. And there is always the chance that it could lead nowhere, yes. But that is a lesson in itself.

Color me too logical, and too creatively self-absorbed, to embrace confusion induced by a roar of communicated-by-default-and-what-is-communicated-is-secondary messages. Besides, you have to plow through a lot of tweets like "Drinking a glass of water" or "@joebloggs: I agree" to find a rip-roaring funny like "Hadn't pooped for five days. Got home and took one so big my ears popped."

2.0 2.0

We're so in love with reinventing the world, we tend to forget that we are not in fact standing at the end of time. The world has been changing all along, and not only is it changing now, it will continue to change. Even change keeps changing.

And while we, perhaps more than any other generation, are keenly aware of just how much our world is changing, we still tend to fall into the trap that somehow we are able to capture that lightning, bottle it up and define its essence. The simple fact is that, ten years from now, we could be looking back and laughing at how excited we were in this time, much like we now look back at the fetishizing of technology that was the thrill back in the 1950s.

What's the next 2.0? I'd like to think it at least doesn't have numbers and decimals. But what do I know? I'm stuck in the here and now.

Contributing Editor Laura Scott also blogs at pingVision and rare pattern.