Spring into birdsong - why we do not twitter · Sunday April 19, 2009 by colin newell
I embrace technology. Heck, I have been doing this for too many years. When I first started monkeying around on the internet, there were no web servers. They were called gopher servers – and they served up text.
My first attempts at webbing were launched from a Windows 3.11 for Work groups box (an IBM PC) around 1995 or so. That was a century ago in internet time.
So now we have streaming audio and video and dynamic web pages that change with every glance. I am good with that, dog. Really I am.
I believe that I owe it to my dedicated reader that I keep it fresh and real.
I do not believe, however, that there are more than a very small handful of people out there that would hang onto every word – if I offered truly up to date snippets of my every thought.
Twitter.
I do not do it. I will not do it.
No one needs to know what I am thinking when I am standing on the corner of 1st and Main Street. No one needs to know when I am sipping on a truly great coffee in a remarkable setting. I can tell them later.
Twitter is an alarming indication that we are getting a tad too self indulgent.
I went through the eighties – I was in my 20’s. And let me tell you folks… the only difference between then and now (for me) was more hair and more hair gel… and a lot more self indulgent behavior from just about everyone around me.
I have a theory. We never actually left the eighties. The mentality is still very much alive in all of us. There are many of us that actually feel that there is an audience for our every utterance, our every stomach gurgle, our every thought – however useless and every trivial thought that jumps from our synapses.
Enough already. How about some quiet.
Take some… on me.
Colin Newell is a Victoria resident and long time user of the World Wide Web. His handiwork has graced the cyber-World for going on 2 decades… if anyone is counting that is.
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I’ll be honest. I have never checked out Twitter. But from what I understand it’s just a bunch of “Status Updates” like in Facebook. Given how insane these make me, and how little I’m on Facebook, I date not join Twitter.
It took me a long time to be convinced (by a good friend) that I should start a blog and I keep it very shallow and impersonal. I’m certainly not looking to tell the world (or the 10 people that read my blog) my innermost thoughts or my most private details.
And anyway – whatever happened to real life conversations over coffee?
— Jabba Apr 20, 02:38 pm #
I agree 100% – I eschew facebook because I have no control over it – and it is a data mining site primarily for the benefit of some faceless and soulless corporation… Yea. People that use facebook… they are not thinking clearly… I liked the term you use: “Keeping it shallow…” – that is brilliant and I think if the average person thought it out some, they would not be on Facebook. It is a great stalking website if you are into crap like that… and do not get me started about people who post pictures of their children online… It is stupid beyond measure.
— Colin Newell Apr 20, 03:17 pm #
Hooray, other people want to converse and leave the tweeting to the birds! I wonder if we will even remember how to write cogent thoughts if this continues. Let alone speak them out loud.
— jeanie Apr 20, 07:29 pm #