Micro-soliloquy, Conversation, and Correspondance

Funny video from Idiots of Ants (via.) Online “conversation” isn’t so much an exchange of ideas as it is an aggregate of micro-soliloquies. Says my friend @kilmer in under 140 characters: “Wondering if usage of an inherently self centered technology like twitter could be evidence of borderline personality disorder”

I’ve always wanted to turn my Twitter feed into a Beckett-inspired existentialist play. A mix of personal minutiae and social marketing gibberish:

– Delicious bibimbap in Kendall Sq before 5pm flight

- three important rules in content: coordinate, specialize, and know your audience http://is.gd/12u2

- drinks at 7B

- Cheapest place for car repairs in Arlington?

Says Bruce Schneier:

Conversation used to be ephemeral. Whether face-to-face or by phone, we could be reasonably sure that what we said disappeared as soon as we said it. Organized crime bosses worried about phone taps and room bugs, but that was the exception. Privacy was just assumed.

This has changed. We chat in e-mail, over SMS and IM, and on social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, and LiveJournal. We blog and we Twitter. These conversations — with friends, lovers, colleagues, members of our cabinet — are not ephemeral; they leave their own electronic trails.

We know this intellectually, but we haven’t truly internalized it. We type on, engrossed in conversation, forgetting we’re being recorded and those recordings might come back to haunt us later.

Oliver North learned this, way back in 1987, when messages he thought he had deleted were saved by the White House PROFS system, and then subpoenaed in the Iran-Contra affair. Bill Gates learned this in 1998 when his conversational e-mails were provided to opposing counsel as part of the antitrust litigation discovery process. Mark Foley learned this in 2006 when his instant messages were saved and made public by the underage men he talked to. Paris Hilton learned this in 2005 when her cell phone account was hacked, and Sarah Palin learned it earlier this year when her Yahoo e-mail account was hacked. Someone in George W. Bush’s administration learned this, and millions of e-mails went mysteriously and conveniently missing.

Ephemeral conversation is dying.

amy cutler.jpg

Here’s a very good post about Twitter’s role in the Mumbai attack from the Berkman Center Digital Natives blog points out that Twitter isn’t good with breaking news because it isn’t designed for breaking news.

What is the point of Twitter anyway? Its a productivity tool and an email shortcut at its most essential. If I’m in NYC for the weekend, a tweet saves me from contacting several people individually. It developed as people bond over events from the historic (presidential debates) to the mundane (Top Chef). You can keep in touch easily — passively — with your favorite people who live far away.

Then there is a question of who to follow. At first I only knew about six people on the service. Two years later, I’m worried a tweet from @diablocody will bear out: “Why aren’t more moms on Twitter? It would seem to appeal to their checking-up obsession.” This means a lot more self-censoring.

Unlike Ideas on Ideas, I don’t think Twitter will die, but it will have to splinter out somehow. And it looks this is on the way in the form of Twitter Groups.

Image by Amy Cutler

Posted by Joanne on Dec. 8, 2008 Tagged: , ,

  • Aditya
    Regulators have been performing a stress test on Barclays and this result is pretty much as good as anyone could have hoped. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on BCS.sterling_silver_cufflinks
  • Bloody brilliant YouTube. Oh dear!

    It's fascinating how the Internet keeps us (or probably should keep us) all on edge about what we say, the same way a politician/celebrity might. How we're all becoming little mini-public figures with the same concerns as traditional public figures, except on a smaller scale.
  • re: Bruce Schneier,

    I remember William Gibson, in the New York Times a few years back, talking about the radical transparency he saw as our future. He talked about how hard it's becoming to keep a secret, which is true, but we're lucky in that it's becoming hard for EVERYONE to keep a secret. Radical transparency means that we'll have a level playing field, in some sense.

    Most of the work I do is in politics...I'm well aware that, one day, there's a good chance something I've written or some piece of smut I've blogged will come up and become a liability for my employer. I'll get fired, get blacklisted, etc. and so forth. Thing is, I'm not the only one with a trail, with this knowledge...it seems that everyone going forward will be in the same position, save for those who choose a life of hermitage, away from technology.

    Once twitter, or something like it, reaches that level of integration into society it ceases to be "narcissistic" and becomes like any other personal display we put on; our clothes, our homes...it becomes a part of the face we wish to show the world. More than a productivity tool, it becomes another (somewhat narrow) channel by which we can identify ourselves.
  • The term a favorite professor once used was "terrified sequential monologues." I still think it's pretty much the most apt description.
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