The next big non-thing thrown up (literally, quite possibly) by teh interwebz is, as I'm sure you all know by now, Twitter.
I'm not going to link to it because it's already ubiquitous.
Basically, it's a retrograde medium which reduces the expansive capacities of the world wide web and mobile communications technology to the paucity of a phone text message.
Now, while 140 characters is just about sufficient to let the other half know you're running late in the car, it's clearly not that big a canvas for people to generally communicate to a wider public in any meaningful fashion.
The mobile texting experience might have implied this anyway, but nevertheless that seems to be the appeal to many, oddly enough. People are hanging out of Twitter, updating frantically every few minutes with admittedly brief inanities.
It's the internet equivalent of when a child starts narrating in the present tense, with their limited capacity to communicate meaningfully.
"Mummy, I'm running! Mummy, look at how high I can jump! Now I can reach the branch, Mummy. Look at me, Mummy!"
Yet it appears to have sucked in punters like Jonathan Ross, George Hook and various Hollywood celebs, but since they're all just shills with careers to promote and products to sell, that is only to be expected.
What isn't to be expected or welcomed is when journalists crawl so far up their own arses while using it that they start demanding other people communicate with them using only this vapid medium.
Clearly the prick involved lost sight of his own actual importance (not a lot - he edits a Business website, for crying out loud) a long time ago.
But while you might sympathise with his clear and utter hatred for the oxygen thieves who earn a living in public relations, by demanding that people only access him via Twitter, he's outted himself as a complete twat.
Ironically, he announced his twattish decision in an email - not a tweet (seriously, people, they're letting you KNOW that this is akin to birdsong in terms of relevance).
If there's any sense left in the world, people will respond to him in kind, by refusing his phone calls and emails too. That way, he should be out of his job by, ooh, Monday lunchtime.
If this is where journalism is going, it's even baser than I thought already.
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6 comments:
I have avoided the temptation to use twitter, despite the fact that mentions of it are almost unavoidable any where on t'internet these days. Once these things start popping up everywhere they usually begin to piss me off no end (everyone running with the herd and all of that). So I am hoping that it makes like ubiquitous 90's television presenter Tony Slattery (Remember him?)and just boards itself up inside a room for six months and then vanishes into obscurity.
On a different note I am slightly disappointed you didn't pick up on this excellent piece of Irish police work:
Polish Driver
Yeah, best story the Irish Times have had in decades.
I would have said something about it but for the fact that quite a few Loyalists seem to be taking too much glee in it.
They don't seem to realise that part of the reason this crap occurs is because most of the best cops in the South have applied to join the PSNI, where cash and conditions are better.
Hopefully yet gimpish corporation will come along and fork out a ridiculous sum for this latest faddish bollocks. If there's any justice in the world they'll end up as broke as these balloons!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/16/friends_reunited/
Anybody wanna buy Myspace? Only a tenner!
I'd caught the Polish driver story on the Beeb site earlier in the week! I like their style! One question though...are you Knackeraguans still allowed to drive around without having passed a test?
Mello, in a word, yes.
But not indefinitely anymore. Now you have to eventually at least sit a test. A moderate improvement on before when my pal Lala managed to drive for 15 years on repeated provisional licences.
How much for Bebo, incidentally? I want to buy it and shut it down so that my nipper will do some damn study for her exams.
Basically, it's a retrograde medium which reduces the expansive capacities of the world wide web and mobile communications technology to the paucity of a phone text message
If it was that I'd agree with everything else you said, but I've been using it for 2 years and found it does the opposite.
The web is the web because it's joined together by links. Links from twitter entries extend the capacity for discussion, learning, and communication. It's a bit like saying "conversation is a rubbish way to communicate because it excludes the reading of books". You generally don't read entire books as part of normal conversation of course, but there's a lot of power in recommendations.
I hear blogging was once called a fad. And the telephone before it.
Remarkably, someone actually seems to be launching twatter.com, probably a yank...
http://www.twatter.com
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