Why Twitter Matters

Ian Rhett speaking at the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference
Ian Rhett

on

May 7, 2007

Why Twitter Matters

I'll be honest - I don't get the allure of Twitter. I don't really WANT to be constantly updated about my friends' moods, what they're listening to, or that they're "comin out of the theater" unless I'm specifically looking for the person texting me. For a while I thought Twitter was hype, and as far as I know, on the business end of things, I still do. (And to be honest, I haven't cared enough about Twitter to take time to research and understand their business model anyway). but tonight i had kind of a breakthrough in my relationship with Twitter. I think one of the most significant contributions Twitter is bringing to the evolution of Connected Consciousness (for lack of a better term - the new collective or common consciousness created by the mass connection of humans to the network.) For the first time in the history of our species, it is possible to massively communicate with massive numbers of human beings about pretty much anything. We are starting to realize the power of connecting human beings (well, we've always known that there is strength in numbers, but there's magic in the network!). The Digg Revolt and the recent Ron Paul/ABCNews action are the early warning shots of a planet's populace made aware. What Twitter brings is perhaps a baby step in the direction of many-to-many communication. But I think in a larger sense, Twitter represents a shortening of the gaps between the synapses of this common, connected consciousness. Consider "the Human Race" as an entity that is just now starting to become aware of the totality of itself. Twitter being the tick in the eyelid just before it opens, perhaps.

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In the last couple weeks I started to play with Twitter (follow pava) to see for myself about all the hype that you mentioned, Ian. What I found was a lot of potential for a huge activist movement. Consider this: With a single text message I can ping 100 friends. (a size of a general social network) about a critical action. (a new Tienanmen Square?) Those 100 friends send ONE TEXT MESSAGE via Twitter to each of their 100 activist friends, and then one more time: 100 x 100 x 100 = 1,000,000 messages in just three jumps. Sure, it can be done via email - but this is faster and straight to our pocket. And when the day comes for us to take the streets, time will be of the essence, and perhaps Twitter will light the way.
At what point do the synapses get overloaded and warn out? When do you completely unplug from the twitters of our Web2oh world and then miss the revolution? ArsTechnica writes that half of Americans are irritated by life online and 15% have unplugged: Web 2.0 may look set to conquer the world, but it has yet to win over the 69 percent of Americans who failed to qualify as "elite tech users." That's the message from a Pew Internet & American Life report that came out today and provides a glimpse at how people in the US—not just techies—use and feel about the technology in their lives. The article is about this Pew study (PDF). I have written before about Continuous Partial Attention and I think that we have yet to really see how all the texting and twittering will play out on the lives, psyches and spirits of humans.