Brendan O'Neill, writing in The Australian, lets rip with a somewhat loopy libertarian rant against those who would, as he sees it, curtail freedom of speech on Twitter. Frankly, I don't think he has much of a case to make. But toward the end of his broadside he did say something which is worth repeating.The Twittermob phenomenon reveals what kind of people dominate the Twitterati. To be a super-frequent tweeter, you must be time-rich and hands-free. That excludes bus drivers, coalminers, nurses … normal people too busy to tweet every three minutes. The most active bits of Twitter are the domain of the cultural and media elites, celebs, think-tankers, people with oodles of time.Which is, despite the petty polemic, pretty much undeniable. You've got to wonder, though, if this bloke owns a mirror. Then again, he apparently delights in being, as The Guardian sagely observes, an "obnoxious intellectual wind-up merchant."
But, let's be honest, he does have a point. Twitter is an ideal vehicle for the time rich. Not that I'm anti-Twitter. In recent weeks, having become becoming a tad more (ahem) "time rich" - Glory Be! - I've finally got around to entering the 'twitterverse' myself. Not, I hasten to add, "every three minutes", and in all modesty it'd be an epic stretch of narcissistic self-delusion to consider myself part of any cultural and media elites, celebs, or think-tankers.
Unlike Brendan perhaps?
And yes, it was through a Twitter link that I discovered O'Neil's wee diatribe (thanks Ed).
Bit of irony there.
I'm thinking that Twitter is just a reflection of the phenomenon of attention span deficit in a larger picture of the dumbing down of those who pride themselves in being experts of multitasking.
ReplyDeleteIt's a slippery slope. A short tweet here. A short tweet a couple of days later. Soon, it's a tweet a day. And very soon after that, you have the attention span of a Corporate CEO.
Electronic devices in general have probably been responsible for teaching people how to multitask. In many cases, it is to the detriment of concentration on the task at hand. We have become accustomed to seeing another individual with whom we are speaking suddenly divert his or her attention to a Smart Phone, or tablet, input a message or series of messages, and then continue with the conversation. Yes, the time-rich are the favored species of Twitter, but most people are simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.
ReplyDeleteBB
I have never been involved with Twitter. Since it is limited to 140 characters it is not very useful. You get started saying something and
ReplyDeleteI have been rather busy repelling satanic, so I have not had the time look in on Otagosh. But with a moment to spar, while musing on my next post topic, entittled: Children are our oppressors, and women rule over us, I thought I would drop here.
ReplyDeleteTo my horror, I find that Black Ops Mikey has developed a language that bears no relation to the Queen's English, and Biker Bob, though a little more lucid than BOM, is still not sure of anything. Hence his probability theory of electronic devices!
If departing from WCG does this to people, all I can say is, come back Douglas, all is forgiven!
Apparently, some people don't read the science journals.
ReplyDeleteAll I ask that people take up the challenge and prove the Bible true and resolve the supposed discrepancies. It would be comforting.
It isn't clear that return to the WCG would be viable since it not only doesn't exist any more, but it seemed to violate the Bible (especially the New Testament) at every turn. I still can't past the false prophets thing -- that's a real deal breaker for me.
Lotsa luck repelling satanic, Tom.
ReplyDeleteHow does that work, anyway? It always seems to be kinda fuzzy and nobody can explain it.