05-01-2008, 01:58 PM
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#7 (permalink)
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Confused Adult
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http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/m...07/st_thompson
Quote:
They're precisely right: Individually, most Twitter messages are stupefyingly trivial. But the true value of Twitter — and the similarly mundane Dodgeball, a tool for reporting your real-time location to friends — is cumulative.
When I see that my friend Misha is "waiting at Genius Bar to send my MacBook to the shop," that's not much information. But when I get such granular updates every day for a month, I know a lot more about her. And when my four closest friends and worldmates send me dozens of updates a week for five months, I begin to develop an almost telepathic awareness of the people most important to me.
It's like proprioception, your body's ability to know where your limbs are. That subliminal sense of orientation is crucial for coordination: It keeps you from accidentally bumping into objects, and it makes possible amazing feats of balance and dexterity.
For example, when I meet Misha for lunch after not having seen her for a month, I already know the wireframe outline of her life: She was nervous about last week's big presentation, got stuck in a rare spring snowstorm, and became addicted to salt bagels.
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Quote:
Bucking The System
Last weekend CNN lead with a big story about James Buck, a
graduate student in journalism from the University of
California-Berkeley who was arrested last month in Mahalla, Egypt
while covering an anti-government protest. Thinking quickly, James
was able to send a one-word Twitter update: "Arrested." His
followers in Egypt and back in the US reacted by contacting the
university and the consulate on his behalf. Before long, James was
updating Twitter with another one-word message, "Free."
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http://tinyurl.com/4b4hsg
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