Comments on: Banality and Shakespeare’s Sister

By: Project That Never Was: TwitterAllMighty.com | DarrenBarefoot.com

Project That Never Was: TwitterAllMighty.com | DarrenBarefoot.com — Fri, 11 May 2007 09:41:33 +0000

[...] in March, inspired by Tara Hunt, I wrote a post which, in part, imagined what Shakespeare’s Twitter account might look like. [...]

By: alan p

alan p — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:20:06 +0000

Re the future history of Twitterisms….imho you don’t have to go too far back, just say the 60’s – look at the “pop” music / literature/ art / fashions/ etc of the time and what has made it through till now. Or even the erudite volumes of the early alt.net.

Going further back and looking at the lessons of archaeology – few nuggets will survive, most will be lost in the digital kitchen middens of our civilisation.

Twitter as a technology is interesting. The content is mostly mental bubblegum

By: Shelley

Shelley — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 01:57:26 +0000

Sounds to me like you’re trying to give greater validity to the use of Twitter than it’s fun or a way of friends to connect. I seriously doubt that anything of Twitter will live past the week, much less a year. As for your grandchildren? Why would they want to waste time reading tossed out blurbs, most of which record the minutia of day to day living?

For history? Thousands of letters were exchanged during the Civil War, the majority of which ended up in boxes in local museums. Why? Because the writing in most was so trivial and so centered around the individual’s life, that they’re basically worthless as historical records.

The most people can absorb as time passes is a summary of each time. Do we really place the fact that Laughing Squid had coffee in the morning into such a summary? Or do we make room for the works of Ada Louise Huxtable and Coetzee?

I’ve been publishing online for 12 years now, and I don’t think I’ve written anything, yet, that really warrants life five minutes after I die.

If you all get some satisfaction, or fulfill a need by being connected via this device, by all means — twitter away. But don’t delude yourselves that what you’re doing is painting a picture of this time for the future.

By: Shazz

Shazz — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 01:02:55 +0000

Ha, me too! Until I saw this piece on Twitter beside her image I never made the connection. VW is a fave author for me – I once read a book about her that said she “revealed her characters from the inside out” … I agree that knowing the seemingly mundane innerworkings and behaviours of people over time really does reveal their true character.

By: miss rogue

miss rogue — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:20:39 +0000

Shazz!

Thanks for this…I nearly forgot that about Woolf. (subconscious?)

By: Shazz

Shazz — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:11:18 +0000

Tara, really interesting that you picked VW as your image here. It raises another thought for me: “Does Twitter somewhat echo the stream of consciousness writing technique?” We know Woolf was the first woman to experiment successfully with this writing technique (Joyce et al. had already used it), which attempted to capture on the page the reality of our minds’ turbulent torrents of grand and inane thought. Isn’t this a bit like Twitter?? I agree with you – the tapestry analogy is the way I view it. Don’t look at the individual threads to derive meaning, but rather the message is in the broader image or pattern the threads suggest and create over time.

So, here’s a fun (and somewhat cheeky) question: “Would Mrs. Dalloway have used Twitter??” ha!
… Shazz

By: John Koetsier

John Koetsier — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:49:09 +0000

Both Nick and Tara are right … and so is Kathy.

1) In the vast majority of cases, tweets and twitters and blog posts and Flickr photos will mean nothing to almost everyone.

2) Which doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile … to people who know the “authors,” to relatives, and to friends.

3) And also doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile to the people who are doing the tweetering. “I wuz here” may be inane, but it is meaningful to the person who wrote it (and the rest of us who deeply reflect on the existential angst embedded in that deeply felt sentiment when we come across it in the subway tunnel or online forum).

4) And which also doesn’t mean that some of the tweets, twitters, and blog posts will not become incredibly relevant as people who are ego-blasting their personalities out into the world become whatever they’re going to be … and future Mandelas and Hitlers and Hemingways and Picassos are studied by historians who have access to their juvenilia.

. . .
. . .

The challenge, as Kathy indicates, will be the signal vs noise issues.

By: Kathy Sierra

Kathy Sierra — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:13:30 +0000

“But I’m not really trying to define twitter or any other stuff that is available for personal publishing as art…just as historical artifacts, which are quite different from art.”

It was easy for me to be distracted by the Shakespeare, Woolf, Bronte, Austin references. But “just as historical artifacts”, this makes a lot more sense. ; )

By: Tara Hunt

Tara Hunt — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:49:51 +0000

Mario, that is the most crucial question of all. I saw Clay Shirky once speak about how we have paper artifacts (as well as cave drawings, etc.) from centuries gone by, but documents recorded on out of date laptops disappear daily.

Truly, is our content going to be preserved? Thank goodness for the Way Back Machine…It gives both an argument for and against people owning their own data.

By: Mario

Mario — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:46:29 +0000

Fascinating point of view.

One concern (even assuming that filtering will be possible) is whether most of the information that is being published will be available in 10, 100 or 1000 years (who is doing with user-generated/published content what deja used to do with usenet).