Have you tweeted lately?
One of my favorite columnists for the NYT, Bob Herbert, recently posted a column titled, Tweet Less, Kiss More. In it, he asks these questions:
Why does anyone want, or need, to be talking constantly on the phone or watching movies (or texting) while driving?... Why do we have to check our e-mail so many times a day, or keep our ears constantly attached, as if with Krazy Glue, to our cellphones?...Why is multitasking considered an admirable talent?
He's got a point. A good one. But I also wondered if he had read his own paper's Magazine this week.
I did, and I've got an answer to his questions.
Who Cares?
“Yes, the season premier [sic] of Entourage is tonight, soooo excited!”
A pretty innocuous little tweet. The kind of thing people share with friends at lunch, or on the phone, or on the way down the hall to bother some other person with the same news. Except, now, we can do that globally. Tap in a few keys, and the lunch/phone/hallway chatter is viral. Thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people spread geographically wide are the recipients of your television aesthetics.
Bob Herbert scores a point.
But, I'm just getting started.
I Do.
The person who sent that misspelled tweet is Jared Cohen, at 28, "the youngest member of the State Department's policy planning staff." He and colleague Alec Ross (a dinosaur at 38 in this hypertech world) are responsible for bringing the 21st century to the centuries old staid, stuffy, and somewhat staunch diplomatic corps.
An example: Following the Iranian elections, civil disobedience was present, green was in the streets, and so were Iranian's cell phones, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter accounts. News was coming out in the same medium as Cohen's praise of the season premier of his favorite show did, in 140 digits or less. News that no western journalist had access to. Real news. Cohen was following developments via Twitter and noticed a post by the defeated opposition candidate Moussavi. Twitter was scheduled to take a 3 day maintenance break. He was alerting Iranians to the eminent disruption of service, at this inopportune time. Cohen, without vetting, without permission, immediately sent an email message to Twitter's CEO (all of 33 now) informing him of the problems it could cause the uprising if their mainline of getting information out of Iran was cut off, even for a prescheduled and announced routine reason. He scrambled and rescheduled the shutoff.
President Obama's declared policy was American neutrality.
So does Hillary.
Shortly after New Year's this year, the head honchos of Google, Twitter, Mobile Accord, SGN (maker of games for cell phones), Howcast, the Webby Awards; Personal Democracy Forum (democracy and technology conferences). They were brought together with Hillary Clinton by Cohen and Ross to discuss opportunities for State in the wireless world. That's the day the State Dept., and Hillary Clinton according to those in the meeting, became an "app."
A few days later, January 12th, two things high level diplomatic events happened.
Haiti was destroyed by an earthquake. Google was hacked in China and rerouted all Chinese queries to Hong Kong.
Mobile Accord created a mobile phone movement called Text Haiti, featured heavily in tv spots, radio ads, etc...and supported by the State Dept. That little number has raised more than $41 million for Haiti relief.
I imagine there were some high level discussions regarding Google going on behind closed doors at State that week, too. And a few weeks later, Ross and Cohen were at Google's Googleplex, discussing with engineers how to tweet and search the revolution. Because anymore there is no revolution if it is not tweeted and searched.
Enter the critic.
Bob Herbert's not the only critic. Evgeney Morozov who writes for Foreign Policy wrote that Cohen and Ross were naive and not acknowledging that Iran also used the internet. To obfuscate, confuse, and conflict. And terrorists tweet worse things than tv schedule updates. And what China did. And if you are a peace loving Iranian green with a Facebook page, what's to say there isn't a friend request waiting for you from the Iranian security forces in disguise?
My favorite part.
Which brings me to my favorite part. The response by NYU professor Clay Shirky, which is just so spot on I have to quote it in full.
“There are a lot of people who are very risk-averse...The loss of control you fear is already in the past. You do not actually control the message, and if you believe you control the message, it merely means you no longer understand what’s going on.”
Which kind of brings me back to Bob Herbert.
Inception
I've been avoiding Facebook and Twitter for all the same reasons Herbert pointed out. It's surface level narcissistic self-absorption at an unprecedented level. How many friends do I have that I've never met in person? Or every spoken to? Or even tweeted or sent a message to? Again, who cares?
But, if used for good, these can be very powerful and empowering tools. I think both Herbert and Evgeny Morozov got it wrong when they discounted and diminished the potential for good here. It may be true that some of us are just like an audience after Inception, standing around wondering what just happened and why this world no longer makes any sense. But, if we can go one level deeper, look beyond tv updates, urgent announcements about the margarita I just made, or the impatience I'm feeling at the drugstore (yes, people tweet these things all the time) and find the meaningfulness in this new technology, the potential to fund the recovery of a nation, if not one family living in it, the possibility to communicate out the real revolution when no one else can get in to see it and the official lines only say, "Revolution, what revolution? This isn't the revolution you're looking for," if you can only see your way to that day, then we might be able to use these technologies for some good in the world.
Kung Fu Theater
I think of it as television. I can watch Celebrity Rehab IV with people I've never heard of or seen before and all the detailed minutiae of their lives (sounds just like that description of Twitter above, doesn't it?) or I can catch Animal Planet, or Biography, or even Rachel Maddow or Larry King before he lumbers off. I mention Larry 'cause he recently said he's never been on the internet. "What is that, you punch buttons, or something?" I believe he said.
And there's always the chance you may stumble on a really good, old, classic Bruce Lee movie.
Like Ross and Cohen in the beginning of the article that inspired this,-diary- well, this really really long tweet.
Cohen had spent the day in transit from D.C.; Ross hadn’t eaten anything besides a morning muffin. Yet they were in the mood to share, and dinner could wait. It wasn’t every day they got to tweet about visiting the headquarters of Twitter.
“Exactly 140 characters,” Cohen said.
“What a ninja you are,” Ross said.
(There's lots more I left out...see what you think for yourself, it's a good read:
Digital Diplomacy)
TWLTW
- The original .com domain names were (from most recent to most
old original):
- dec.com Digital Electronics Company, registered domain name on Sept. 30th, 1985. Bought by Compaq, which was bought by HP which is where the URL sends you now.
- mcc.com Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation. Registered July 11, 1985. Went belly up in 2000.
- think.com May 24th, 1985. Home of Thinking Machines, manufacturer of supercomputers, bought by Oracle. It now points to a Thinkquest site.
- bbn.com April 24th, 1985. BBN was an early packet switching and carrying company, they initiated the use of the @ symbol in email addresses, and "transported" the first electronic mail message. It now points to Raytheon, which bought them in 2009.
- symbolics.com March 15th, 1985.
.com was originally conceived as .cor, except for the lack of clarity with .core, .corps, and .coeur. Only 6 domain names were registered in all of 1985, the 6th being northrop.com. Apple.com was the 64th registered domain name, and Microsoft wasn't even in the first 100.
- Wikipedia has a list of misconceptions page which holds some very interesting information about Washington's dentures and who really invented baseball. Not to mention the 300bc accurate measurement of the circumference of the spherical Earth. Interesting page. I could fill a long TWLTW list with it alone.
- Apple cares about its customers. Here, have a free rubber thingy and software update for your phone!
- Vocabulary: A website that lists political vocabulary! Some highlights:
- Psephology: the scientific study of elections and democratic action.
- Farley File: The file politicians keep on every person they meet, including personal and professional details. Used to personalize future interactions. Named after an assistant to FDR who is credited with establishing the practice.
- Soft Power: The ability to persuade and convince, as opposed to hard power's ability to coerce.
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce last month hired Margaret Spellings, former Bush Admin. Secretary of Education and architect/defender of NCLB to run its education programs. Who even knew the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had education programs? Wow. I'm almost afraid to look them up, but I might need to just to satisfy this strange curiosity I now feel.
- Ok, I looked it up. But, I only got as far as the first page, where I read this:
Studies by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota reveal that the capacity for developmental skills begins in the first five years of life. This is the beginning point for a person's creativity, communication, team working, problem solving, and critical thinking skills.
Did you catch that? The "capacity for developmental skills" begins when a person is born. Deep insights from the Chamber. And they only needed the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota to confirm this is the case. Really? The Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota is the authority for early childhood development studies cited by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Looks like their standards are kind of low strange in the educational research category. Oh, Margaret. Enjoy yourself over there.
- Vocabulary
- Casuistry: a bogus argument designed to defend an action or feeling, attempts to solve moral dilemmas by applying general rules, overly subtle, hair-splitting
- Women's Equality Day is August 26th. To celebrate, visit this site.
- Approximately 9% of Americans have an August birthday.
- Am I the only one who thinks of that Star Wars scene when clicking on a dead link and getting this in the browser window:
The page you are looking for is not available...
What Did You Learn This Week?