Before our week discussing and learning about micro-blogging and Twitter, I had a Twitter account. The only reason I started one was when my husband and I went on a 2-week vacation, traveling around New England. I wasn't going to have a computer with me and I wouldn't be able to keep in touch with my friends and family online with what we were doing across the country. I set it up so that my tweets would be compiled at the end of the day and automatically post an entry on my LiveJournal page and my friends there would see what we were up to for the day. This was before Facebook's streaming news feed was as powerful as it is today, so this was the only way I could update online from my non-smart-phone. It worked, even though I had some very vocal dissenters from the crowd exclaiming how much they hated people who were on Twitter and whose 140-character posts were nothing of importance. After our trip, I never used it again. I still don't for the most part, even though I do follow some of my favorite celebrities and programs, and it wasn't until this past year when I started getting more involved. I'm still not as involved as a lot of other people I know, which I am OK with. I have friends who insist on principle to never start a Twitter account. That's OK, too. I whole-heartily agree that not everyone needs to be on Twitter. Some of the readings we had this week sounded very "tweet or perish" that it's almost silly. Twitter is out there. So are a lot of other things new and shiny. I honestly do not think people are missing out on much if they're not on Twitter.
I also agree with my other classmates that even though television swept the nation decades ago, people still listen to the radio. I'll be honest, though, my husband and I are considering ditching cable TV because all the shows we would watch on TV are available online for free or for a smaller fee than our $140 monthly cable bill. Do I think everyone should do this? No. People are free to receive and send information in any medium they want. While email may still be fast and Facebook statuses change in the blink of an eye, I still use the postal service for sending cards and letters to my friends and family.
Like some of my classmates, I agree that Twitter is just another medium for accessing information and conversing with people online. It's not a necessity. I disagree strongly with Erick Schonfeld's cry for everyone to "jump into stream". "So jump into the stream and let it carry you away. Or you can stand timidly on the banks until everyone else around you has already taken the plunge." Why? Why are those people who simply don't want to jump into the information stream "timid"? Have we all turned into lemmings and should simply do what the person next to us is doing just because it's new and everyone else is doing it? No. People should be free to make their own choices about how they interact with others online. I think we should all be flexible and that if someone we want to keep up with uses Twitter, then go with it. I call people to go with the flow, rather than jump into the stream or perish.
Another thing that stuck out for me in our readings this week was the stream being something negative. Nova Spivack asks how we are to "cope" with this new method of retrieving information. Micro-blogging has made the "now" much smaller, due to how fast information can travel. Why do we have to cope with this? It's not a disease or a disability. I think that micro-blogging like with Twitter and Facebook can be beneficial. Sure, the world moves quickly, but does it move any more quickly than it did 30, 40, 50, 100 years ago? I don't think so. I just think that people are able to move just as quickly as the world now, rather than being a few steps behind.
I agree with your assessment that Twitter is just another medium for accessing information and is not, as some believe, the best thing since slice bread! After trying Twitter, I found this mode of communication to be rather superficial and kind of annoying. Similarly, I also disagree with Erick Schonfeld’s push for everyone to “jump into the stream and let it carry you away. Or you can stand timidly on the banks until everyone else around you has already taken the plunge”. His peer pressured call for reckless impulsivity brought to mind the following question I’m sure we’ve all heard as kids: “If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it to?” Meaning that the worst reason to do something, is simply because everyone else is doing it. We shouldn’t blindly conform just because something is popular; rather we should make up our own minds.
ReplyDeleteIf it wasn't a class requirement I would still be holding firm to my I will not have a twitter account, and I will probably delete my account after this class. It isn't because I don't think it can be useful it is because the last thing I need in my life is a resource that is updated every few minutes with links and articles for me to go read and check out. I have a hard enough time not falling down the rabbit hole that is the internet.
ReplyDeleteI strongly believe that as librarians we are supposed to know about all these technologies, be able to explain them and actually be able to teach their use to an interested party if we are asked for. After saying that, this doesn't mean that we "have to" use them or being faithful consumers of them. These are technologies that accomplish different ways of communication for different people. If libraries can incorporated some of them in the way they connect with the patrons,it is a good thing. The most, the merrier.
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