Andrew Kantor on Twitter

Andrew Kantor does us all a service by snidely collating the most conventional arguments against Twitter in one place. Where better than square, middle-of-the-road USA Today?

[from Twitter is just too much information - USATODAY.com]

Twitter is a bad, bad thing — not just because of what it does, but because of what it says about all of us and our need to be connected. Twitter's whole existence is based on the premise that we aren't yet in touch with one another quite enough.

According to Twitter, you see, we should be in touch every second — every moment. This is madness, and down this road lies overscheduled kids, over-prescribed Ritalin, and anti-depressants in value-sized jars.

Twitter operates on the theory that people need to be in touch every moment of every day. But that philosophy — and Twitter is just the latest iteration — is doing us all more harm than good

[...]

An even moderately active Twitter user is like a four year old, giving a running dialog of her life to anyone within earshot. "I'm eating lunch. Now I'm throwing away the wrapper. Whoops, I got some ketchup on my shirt. I'm going to the bathroom to wash it off."

Remember that Rock&Roll, premarital sex, and instant messaging have been hailed as being bad for us too, and no less immoral.

I just love the sanctimonious tone that the Twitter haters take. Oh yes, this connected life choice flies in the face of the disconnected norms that we are supposed to blindly accept.

Imagine the following letter to Kantor:

Yes, Andrew, I know we are supposed to only talk to people we work with, our families, and a handful of friends. I know I am supposed to point my attention at only the most obvious and predetermined activities. I know I am supposed to keep the shades pulled down, and my head down, focused on my work. I know that twittering is sick, sick: a perversion.

Perhaps someone will set up a de-twitterification program, a 12-step path to freeing myself from this demon Twitter?

Thanks, Andrew, for giving me the strength to acknowledge that I have hit bottom: I am a Twitterholic!

Idiot.

But I expect that the transition to a web of flow -- based on social relationships, transient and ambient intimacy (thank you Leisa), and an open and generous spirit -- will bring out the Calvinist lurking not so very far below the skin of our self-appointed arbiters of morality, like Kantor.

The real problem is that Kantor et al do not understand the benefits -- or even the possibility -- of moving to a flow state of interaction. They believe that you have to transfer 100% of your attention from task to task, and that you can only do one thing at a time, all of the time. (Yes, and you can only have one friend at a time, or love one person at a time. Or read one book at a time. And don't mix the peas with your mashed potatoes, either.)

tags: andrew+kantor, twitter, a+web+of+flow, traffic+and+flow

Comments

[Marc Orchant]

Good one Stowe! I've encountered more than few Twitter haters or bashers in the past few weeks. Some "get it" when I describe the asynchronous, one-to-a-select-many nature of the medium and provide examples of how it's proved to be really useful at, say a conference, to arrange meetups and coordinate activities.

"Ineffable" is a word I've been using to describe Twitter. I think it fits. Until you drop into Twitter flow, it's a bit difficult to adequately express the unique state of connectedness it provides.

Wikipedia says:

"To say that something is "ineffable" means that it cannot or should not, for overwhelming reasons, be expressed in spoken words (as with the concept of true love). It is generally used to describe a feeling, concept or aspect of existence that is too great to be adequately described in words, or that inherently (due to its nature) cannot be conveyed in dualistic symbolic human language, but can only be known internally by individuals.

In Zen it is often said that (by analogy) the finger can point to the moon but is not the moon; likewise words and actions can point towards what is ineffable but cannot make another know it."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineffable

Is there banal, "who cares" chatter going on? Of course. Is that typical of what I (or you) see in the Twitter context we've built by adding friends and followers to our Twitter page? Not at all. My Twitter home page (or the other Twitter tools I've adopted on the Mac and on the PC) shows me a running series of quick interactions among some of the smartest, most interesting people I know and makes it easy for me to interact with them.

[Ian Wilker]

I really like that line "transient and ambient intimacy" -- thanks for sharing that one, apt articulation of social-web vibe...

As far as alarmist reactions to Twitter are concerned, I can only surmise that the uninitiated often don't pick up that a Twitter user has substantial control over the firehose's "rate-of-flow" -- it's not as if I'm stuck with the full-flow, attention-hogging SMS option. I can turn alerts on or off, or switch to IM or web interface. (And unless I'm out and want to keep up with herds of mobile tweeters -- a rare occurrence -- I almost always use the web interface; couple times a day, I dip in and see what people are up to.)

[Andrew Kantor]

Interesting that you jump from my argument, 'Twitter is another way to get overloaded with useless information' to "I know we are supposed to only talk to people we work with, our families, and a handful of friends."

Did I say that? Did I even imply that? Perhaps you didn't read the column thoroughly. My point was clearly *not* "You should only talk to a handful of people" as you imply.

It was, rather, that you don't need to be in touch with your five or 10 or 500 or 5000 friends every moment.

Please read things more carefully before commenting on them.

[Dino]

Yes, but Stowe, don't forget the soon-to-be classic: what's the POINT of Twitter?
Twitter-bashers love to question the point of it all. As if each and every one of their activities is profoundly meaningful :)