Why I hate Twitter

Twitter, and the whole family of tumbleloging that it seems to have inaugarated, is the bane of my internet existence. The blog is about the smallest unit of content I really want to deal with: don't broadcast every inane detail of your life, because even the most interesting person in the world spends some time kicking back catching up on 24, or similarly mundane activities that I don not want to know about. For example:


redfern -  I'm just bored  less than 5 seconds ago  from im
avinashsonee -  Watching movie : Simhadri ( Telugu )  less than 20 seconds ago  from web
grandmasterj -  listening to my coworker eat.  less than 10 seconds ago  from twitterrific
netbard  At work, about to start some coding  less than 5 seconds ago  from im

I just don't care, people...there's a lot of talk about the phenomenal amount of information being generated annually now: I can't bring myself to grab any statistics now, but for the sake of argument, I guess something like as much information as was generated between 1600-1900 is now generated annually. Thats a fearsome signal to noise ratio, I suspect (some sort of economic inflation of information?). Stop generating even more with your pointless content waffle, people, and think of poor future historians wading through your endless Twitter stream, marvelling at how they still have a civilisation after the phenomenal time wasting evinced by pointless micro-content.
Rant over.

felix_cohen's blog

Comments

twitterphilia

On June 21st, 2007 tony says:

Felix - I have to disagree. Think of the old-old days ... the people who are important in my social and business life are within two stone-throws. So and so is looking bored this morning - read "invitation to plot & socialise" - so I go and plot ... another is assiduously at work - I won't disturb her now, etc.

Your measure of information is the wrong one: we used to create vast amounts of information in our encounters. The starkness of online work has a lot to do with us having stripped that very mportant information out. We still have a long way to go in producing usable contextual information that will shape our digital sociality.

Think of twitter as the nearly unconscious context that helps to signpost how we expect others to behave towards us.

So tell me - what are you up to and can I expect a reply soon?

www.felixcohen.co.uk