Joshua Hood
2020visiononline.org

Would you mind posting an update about your professional level use of the iPhone? Have you found workarounds for your complaints, or just accepted the limitations?

Two great illustrations of how Twitter-power has been used for good and not evil can be tracked from the URL’s below.

The first is Schofield of The Guardian discussing how Twitter was so useful at the annual SWSX music festival in Austin, Texas this year, it could actually change what performances people attended, changing people mid-step in their direction. SWSX even provided a special screen just so people could track comments on the performances, who liked what or didn’t, etc.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2007/03/11/twitter_crowd_goes_bananas_at_sxsw.html

In the second URL, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com discusses how Comcast’s undoing may be thanks to Twitterers who are fed up with the company’s pitiful performance and are communicating their service issues en masse and in real time — no way now for Comcast to sweep the dirt under the rug:

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/04/06/one-person-you-dont-want-to-piss-off/

Likewise, there are some less some wonderful examples, too, one that almost reflects a lynch mob mentality. When a panel moderator at SWSX was deemed “too soft” on a certain celebrity, some Twitterers might as well have been cinching a gossip-tronic noose around her neck.

Is our culture uniformly narcissistic? Of course not. Are all Twitter users egomaniacs? Absolutely not. Could Facebook help me be a better friend? Yeah, sure it could. My previous statement was more pontification and wonder than anything else.

I do think it’s wise, however, to look from a macro view and employ our imaginations in discerning where all this is taking us. It’s a good thing to do before blindly accepting any new development or technology. This is, perhaps, something we have done too little of in the last century or two.

This is an experiment. You may be right. I may come to that conclusion. We’ll see. Right now, I’m enjoying it. (I like learning new stuff.)

Mike

How does this constant conversation via Twitter fit into the other goal you celebrated not long ago, namely, checking email just twice a day in order to have large blocks of time to focus, think and work? Seems to me that when folks Twitter they actually fritter away precious time that could be spent reflecting on more Big Picture, long term thinking.

You may be right; I’m not sure. Certainly, we need to apply some critical thinking here. However, it seems to me that my focus is other-centered—on the people I am following rather than the other way around. It may be voyeuristic, as Scott pointed out, but it could also help me keep up with my friends and, as a result, be a better friend to them. Just a thought.

Mike

I started “twittering” this week too. I’m still not sure the benefits, but I also linked the updates to Facebook and so far no one has either complained or encouraged.

Overall I think it’s fun, just like any other social networking. I disagree with Cal that it is narcissistic, but I do think that it is extremely voyeuristic. My chief concern is how the information could potentially be used (I wrote a little bit about it on my blog), otherwise I agree with all of your benefit points.

Twitter on!

Like anything, I’m sure Twitter can be used to a positive effect—and you’ve put forth some ideas on how to do that here. But my overall feeling is that technologies like these do more harm than good, especially to the younger generations growing up nursing at the Internet’s teat. For all our talk about connectedness via such applications, I wonder if they teach us to focus too much on ourselves and so isolate us from living in true community: where we serve and think of others more often and more highly than ourselves; where we follow St. John the Baptist’s example and seek to decrease, dying to ourselves; where we pour out our lives for the sake of others, like Christ.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. But I wonder if we spend too little time thinking about who’s steering the ship and where it’s all taking us.