An e-mail from my Senator Bill Nelson (D. FL) informs me today that he will begin twittering and NASA has announced that Astronaut in training Mike Massimino will be doing the same. They're drawing a line that I will not cross.
I mean, I still have some pride in being adult and being able to read without moving my lips and able to follow something longer than 140 words without my
thoughts wandering toward the need for iPodal noise injection and wiggling in my seat. What's next, the congressional record spelled out letter by letter on alphabet blocks by a fuzzy, green sock puppet? Three body orbital mechanics brought to you by the letter N?Sure I'm interested in what Nelson has to say and I am interested in space technology -- but. Haven't we had 8 years of the dumbing down of everything already? OK, so maybe it's not quite how the world ends, but it sure looks like the way adulthood ends and as far as I'm concerned, NASA and Nelson and all the other bird brains can twitter this, for all I care.
Just guessing now - going out on a limb, perhaps - but, um, you're not on Facebook either, are you?
ReplyDeleteIf I understand you correctly, Monsieur Fogg, the Universe started with a bang but ends with a twitter. Does that mean our cosmologists are wrestling with a full Nelson or a half Nelson? As the Universe continues to expand, does that mean twitter is just another form of N-tropy?
ReplyDeleteDon't you just LOVE technology; it has really added value to our lives!
ReplyDeleteI spend quite a bit of time trying to 'figure out' all these new internet fads, and twitter is just a fad.
Everytime something new and innovative is thrown at me I just ask one simple question, "Why?" and of course the canned response is always something along the lines of branding or getting out in front of people...
As I see it there is so much 'getting out in front of people' that most people can't see a thing because they are just overwhelmed.
Twittering Senators and astronauts....that is really way out there....
Actually I did sign up on Facebook a few weeks ago in order to get in contact with someone I had been looking for. Somehow, I've been getting tons of spam ever since that claims to be from Facebook
ReplyDeleteIn an expanding universe, I would expect the wavelength of the twittering to increase over time, eventually becoming a cosmic background groan of sorts.
There are so many things that make me ask why these days. I've read that Japanese teens are descending into the use of pictograms as an even more inane way of communication. Sending a picture of a beer mug with a question mark means " do you want to go out for a beer? I suppose it was inevitable since the trend away from requiring people to read to be able to use equipment. I imagine that I can figure out "on" and "off" in any western language and in Chinese for that matter, but nooooo We have to have cryptic symbols and the eyes of an 18 year old to read them.
Humbug.
I find all the twittering and faces and spaces,etc mostly an annoying distraction.
ReplyDeleteI suppose if you are in your teens or early twenties it's primary communications, but for me, phooey!
Twitter for Wingers.
ReplyDeleteTwitter Me Timbers, Matey
ReplyDeleteYes, Twitter is strange -- it seems to be based on the misguided notion that the first silly thought that pops into one's head is the most authentic one. Keepin' it real, and all that. There's something in being true to one's initial strong impressions, registering them as the raw material for one's subsequent thoughts, but Twitter doesn't sound like the kind of thing that would honor this need. I can't see the great literary impressionist Walter Pater walking to and fro, twittering of Michelangelo....
PS -- for a fine consideration of the interplay between the ephemeral and the eternal in life and art, how about that Chuck Baudelaire and his un-Twitterly little book, The Painter of Modern Life?
ReplyDeletePerhaps Twitter is the voice of modern life and its self-impressed banality. Everyone's famous for 140 words.
ReplyDeleteOur dried voices, when
We twitter together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
to return to ripping off Mr. Eliot here ;-)
When I twitter about how my nights are spent,
ReplyDeleteWith half my days absorbed in Technorati,
And the other half obsessed with ignorati;
When trees falling in the forest are a non-event;
There will always be bloggers who opine.
Please note: I am just as boring in person as online.
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
ReplyDeleteWith hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A twittering was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.
Sumer is ycomen in,
Loude sing cuckou!
Groweth bored and writeth word,
And tweeteth the wode now.
Sing cuckou!
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I
ReplyDeletetwittered weak and weary
Over a hundred and forty words
destined to bore.
Suddenly there came a tweet, a smear
of guano at my feet. . .
Hey, am I here all by myself?
Captain: Hey, am I here all by myself?
ReplyDeleteMany apologies, everyone. Have you ever had one of those slumps? For almost a month now, I have been in self-imposed isolation mode ... not wanting to write anything, read anything, work on anything, even meet with friends? Total isolation, a bitter, twitterless time it has been.