Thursday, April 05, 2007
Obligatory Twitter post
I give up – you’ve got me, blogosphere echo chamber. With all the discussion about Twitter, I feel obliged to at least offer an opinion on it. So here goes:
I’m currently in the middle of a collaborative, qualitative study of undergraduates. We are using journals and focus groups to examine how younger individuals use multiple mediums or modes of interaction. A response that came up time and again is that taking the time to talk with another person is less common than texting, emailing, and using other less (graphically, contextually, information) rich modes. The causes are anybody’s guess: narcissism, lack of time, or too many acquaintances to take the time to interact in a meaningful way with all of them. But the trend is clear: individuals seem to prefer modes of interaction and technologies that allow them a large degree of control paired with convenience. Twitter tickles that sweet spot perfectly.
That said, despite other opinions, I do not believe Twitter will impact the majority of individuals’ social relations. Certain people with addictive personalities indeed might have difficulty using a service such as Twitter because it offers a near-instantaneous stream of information. However, Twitter isn’t any more responsive than, an Internet connection, which can facilitate all manner or near-instantaneous interactions, or text messaging. Perhaps it engages people who may otherwise not feel this style of technology is “for them,” but I am not sold on mobile technologies being the next major online movement.
When a new technology is introduced, critics are ready with proclamations of how it will drastically impact our lives. These claims include but are not limited to: television disassociates you from reality, Nintendo makes you dumb, and the Internet diminishes your capacity to connect with others. Rarely these warning come to bear in any significant fashion. It has been repeatedly shown that most people do not have difficulty processing large amounts of information; the excess gets ignored, or the information source avoided. In this and almost every case of a new commodity, the technology can be easily avoided. Cell phones, for all their connected-ness, still have an “off” button.
I’m currently in the middle of a collaborative, qualitative study of undergraduates. We are using journals and focus groups to examine how younger individuals use multiple mediums or modes of interaction. A response that came up time and again is that taking the time to talk with another person is less common than texting, emailing, and using other less (graphically, contextually, information) rich modes. The causes are anybody’s guess: narcissism, lack of time, or too many acquaintances to take the time to interact in a meaningful way with all of them. But the trend is clear: individuals seem to prefer modes of interaction and technologies that allow them a large degree of control paired with convenience. Twitter tickles that sweet spot perfectly.
That said, despite other opinions, I do not believe Twitter will impact the majority of individuals’ social relations. Certain people with addictive personalities indeed might have difficulty using a service such as Twitter because it offers a near-instantaneous stream of information. However, Twitter isn’t any more responsive than, an Internet connection, which can facilitate all manner or near-instantaneous interactions, or text messaging. Perhaps it engages people who may otherwise not feel this style of technology is “for them,” but I am not sold on mobile technologies being the next major online movement.
When a new technology is introduced, critics are ready with proclamations of how it will drastically impact our lives. These claims include but are not limited to: television disassociates you from reality, Nintendo makes you dumb, and the Internet diminishes your capacity to connect with others. Rarely these warning come to bear in any significant fashion. It has been repeatedly shown that most people do not have difficulty processing large amounts of information; the excess gets ignored, or the information source avoided. In this and almost every case of a new commodity, the technology can be easily avoided. Cell phones, for all their connected-ness, still have an “off” button.
