Gene twitters his last tweet
p2pnet news view P2P:- Twitter is all the rage!
Everyone’s enthused!
Well, maybe not everyone …. 
“I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get Twitter,” blogs Ontario photographer and writer Gene Wilburn.
But, he says, “with everyone advising you to use it, in conjunction with Facebook and other social media, to keep an Internet profile, I gave it a try”.
He goes on »»»
I located some friends and `followed` their `tweets`. I followed the tweets of some well known personalities. I tried Twitter as an `update service` to let me know about articles, news items, and new web entries.
I understood all this, but I still didn`t get it. Twitter derives from instant messaging and from text messaging, phone to phone. Cell phone that is. It belongs to the culture that apparently wants to be in touch and available almost all hours of the day. I automatically think `teenagers` but what I`m seeing belies that. The world is turning into a cell-phone/texting culture. I don`t get that either.
I own a cell phone. I`ve never texted with it and I only have it on for emergency purposes when I`m out of the house. Perhaps my mild aversion to cell phones comes naturally. For over five years I was in an `on-call` rotation in the IT department of a large insurance company. It was 24/7 and often brutal. When my pager beeped or my corporate cell phone rang, it was usually not happy news.
Even so, I still don`t get why people want to broadcast one-liners along the lines of `I`m in Starbucks having a delicious green-tea latte`, `Just watched Dollhouse. It`s not going to survive`, `Rejection slip. I`m bummed!`, `Too sleepy to stay awake. Night, night.`
Sure, it`s life, as lived even. It`s also life at its most trite and banal. It`s characters acting out a part in a play with a bad script, made up as it goes. Engrossing? Perhaps to a sociologist.
Lately there has been a rash of articles in places like the Toronto Star offering advice on what constitutes a good use of Twitter, Twitter for your business needs, and so forth. Kids, when the daily newspapers start explaining how to tweet, you know whatever `cool factor` Twitter might once have had is gone.
Admittedly I`m not the best judge of `cool`. I`m somewhat solitary, but when I see friends, I prefer to see them face to face. I don`t automatically count everyone I meet on the Net as a `friend.` I`m fine with email — it works more than adequately to keep me in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. I enjoy discussion forums where something might actually be discussed.
A lot of people keep Twitter open in a window as they work, and tweet back and forth with `friends` throughout the day. Although habitues of Twitter will likely disagree vehemently, I think I can say with some assurance that every tweet read and replied to lessens your concentration and efficiency.
You can multitask fluently, you say? There`s not a neurologist on the planet who agrees with you. `Multitasking is a myth`, is their consistent message. But we all cherish our illusions.
“Life is short,” Gene says, adding:
“As I approach my 64th birthday, it seems very short. I`ve tweeted my last tweet. My account has been deleted.
“I’d rather be writing.”
May, 2009
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May 17th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
It’s unfortunate that people like Gene who “just don’t get it” are still making the rules about these emerging technologies. Much like my friends in high school who “didn’t get” email, these groups are an ever-shrinking minority. Hopefully more and more of them will start gaining decision-making positions as well.
May 17th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Just to play the Devil’s Advocate (!), instead of just saying people “just don’t get it”, how about saying WHAT it is they don’t get?
Example: What added value do you think Twitter actually gives us?
May 17th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090514/0218574881.shtml
Bailing Out the RIAA?
May 17th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090515/1301064900.shtml
Finally an EXPLANATION why Sony are such morons.
The CEO of Sony Pictures, Michael Lynton, said: “I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the internet. Period.”
May 17th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
You know SteelWolf, I’m one of the older generation.
Let me tell you a shocker for you. I said the same things when I was younger. That our generation was going to have to wait till it became the CEOs and politicians to get laws passed that we thought we really needed. When it came around that time that “our generation” was in power, guess what? More of the same. While waiting, our generation changed to conform with the working world. Wanna hint? So will yours to get and keep that 9-to-5 that keeps the bills paid.
Allow me to go a little further. I’m of the baby boom generation but I’ve always been an early adopter rather than some conservatively waiting till it’s popular, provided I see value in it. Like the author of this article, I don’t see value in tweets. Somehow a 160 character text message won’t give me a complete viewpoint. I don’t want to know what you had for dinner or breakfast, don’t want to have a blow by blow every hour on it either. I don’t find value in that.
In fact I don’t like cell phones. When I am off from work, that’s it. I don’t want a call because someone can’t take the time to look for that piece of paperwork they needed. They can either go look where it’s supposed to be or wait till I’m on the clock again to get it.
I go back a day or two with computers. Back to the days when computers didn’t have hard drives. Before the internet came to town it was modems and BBSes. So yah, I didn’t wait for computers to get popular to try them out. I went and learned DOS because that’s what you had to do to operate one.
But tweets…I don’t fail to see where it adds something valuable in life for the bill you pay to get it and send it.
May 17th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
@RW…
I’ve clicked your 2 links.
Now, maybe I’m half-asleep and just don’t realize it [yet : )], but I’m not quite sure what those stories have to do with the topic on this page. Can you placate me?
May 17th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I’m not old (I’m 25), but I don’t own a cell phone and don’t want one. Regardless, they’re here to stay. But “Twitter,” given its relative uselessness, probably isn’t. It just reeks of “fad.”
I think text messaging will also die out, eventually. I don’t understand the appeal of typing out everything on a tiny little keyboard instead of just calling someone and speaking.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
You are wrong there RadialSkid. There is a control war going on with cell.
Soon you will be able to call up your med records on it, grades when at that job interview, banking via cell, on and on.
These are the contracts, control and privacy issues facing us now. So be aware of them.
If you are not a user of these, opt out, or be aware of the politics behind it so you can fight for an opt-out.
Its coming. Like it or not.
Bell, telus, et al. will be the gatekeepers.
It will far from die out as computers are going more and more hand help, and laws are trying to be passed to prevent what you can do with them.
wake up pls. ty.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:53 am
@Devil’s Advocate
These are tips to Jon, which are traditionally left in the comments to the story that shows up first. Usually, the story is called “headline roundups” (and these links would be appropriate there), but there is no such story this time.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Twitter is for sycophants and attention whores. Yeah, I don’t “get it” either.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Yes it’s new, yes it’s popular, but it’s pretty much useless.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Gene pretty much summed up what I think of Twitter. It’s pointless and I’m not going to be surprised when it fades away in a year or two.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
An interested thing would be a distributed twitter, aka laconi.ca / identi.ca.
A challenge is to make users run server software. If there are enough of users who are willing to run the server software, a “distributed twitter” or “distributed facebook” becomes possible.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:38 am
I dont use email or a cell phone, both are completely useless in my internet experience, like the poster above I thought both may be a good idea but they ended up as a tool to help the lazy get things done without effort by passing the buck, the cellphone was phased out rather fast when calls came in at odd hours of the day from folks wanting things, and as to email do I really want to have to wade through hundreds of items of crap to otain one or two emails a week ?
I use a free encrypted instant messenger and nothing else, works fine I dont need to waste any of my life or revenue making some cell companies rich to partake in drivel, most folks who think like me certainly do “get it” but dont want it when its a favourite tool of timewasters or drama needy folks.
The “tech-savvy” upside is the government dont track my movements with a cell phone I dont have, and cant view any emails, security is then perhaps only for those who “get it”, not those who think they do.