Andrew Kantor on "Andrew Kantor on Twitter"

Andrew Kantor responded to my recent post, Andrew Kantor on Twitter, (or perhaps my tweet announcing the post: "I disembowel Andrew Kantor's rant against Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/36enpd"):

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.

Actually, I was jumping from your argument, based on these statements:

1. "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."
2. "And what could be better than knowing what everyone is doing at every moment? Heaven forbid you should miss that kind of detail. (And if you do, you can "nudge" your friends — continuing the preschooler metaphor, you're like a four year old saying, "What are you doing now? What are you doing now? What are you doing now?")"
3. "Twitter.com also features a public timeline, which tells you what every Twitter user is up to. It's full of startling revelations like "time for lunch.... Hmm what should I have. Ssoooooo many choices," (that from "magicman18") and "Slow roasting a brisket" from "jonnyblujeans." I don't know about you, but I'm ever so glad random strangers took the time to share those insights. (You can disable the "public" function. Would that more people did.)"

And then I was extrapolating at the underlying mindset involved, Andrew. You state that Twitter is bad, and that we are morally weak or sick in the head for wanting to be connected through a medium like this to our 'friends.' Then you mention the public timeline -- a more important part of the experience of Twitter than your superficial tinkering might have led you to believe -- and suggest that we are four-year-olds for communicating our social presence in this way.

Perhaps I read too much into your piece, but I did read it closely. I should be surprised by the arrogant tone in your comment that suggest that my comments went off track because I didn't read your purple prose closely enough.

Returning to the public timeline and the general pattern of Twitter use, Twitter "friends" are not necessarily real-world friends. Many of my Twitter 'friends' are people that I hardly know at all: they are just people that are interesting sources of observation about the world. Of course, in general, these are not people who are posting "I just brushed my teeth," or "going to the bathroom." Consider just these examples from my recent feed:

• chrispirillo Bayesian filter god, Paul Graham, claims Microsoft is dead: http://www.paulgraham.com/m
• dhowell If you're hell bent on being a person with a bowl of potpourri in the house, don't have kids; or learn to revel in it all over the floor.
• emilychang frustrated that the features of highrise aren't integrated into basecamp. in fact, the two paradigms compete and overlap and need 2 logins..

So, I had assumed that since you were talking about 'friends' you meant it in this more liberal, generous, and open way: any of the interesting folks in your Twitter traffic. In which case, my subsequent screed makes more sense, where I presumed that you were suggesting that this great involvement with a larger world -- one of the key points of Twitter -- is also bad, and immoral. Since giving up Twitter means throwing away this sort of connection, I thought you were arguing that this kind or degree of connectedness is in itself bad, and that we should just go back to the conventional model of email, IM, and f2f interaction with people already well known to us.

But, perhaps you have completely missed this aspect of Twitter. Your superficial and prejudiced examination of its workings led you to believe what you wrote, and you missed the real deal: that Twitter -- like other flow apps -- is a revolutionary shift in how people online make sense of their world, how they engage, and how apps are supposed to augment social networks.

So, in the future, please do a deeper 'reading' of the social context of these apps before going to print with small-minded, dismissive, and insulting condemnations.

tags: andrew+kantor, twitter, social+presence, traffic+and+flow, flow+applications

Comments

[kathleen]

Well done, Mr. Boyd. I had similar thoughts/comments on my own post concerning Andrew Kantor's arrogant attitude re Twitter: http://thingseen.typepad.com/things_ive_seen/2007/04/why_twitter_is_.html

[Niall Larkin]

All true. People do Twitter in an intelligent and apposite manner. But let's not overlook the value of banality and trivia to a relationship. If someone was saying "I just brushed my teeth etc" its important information to an intimate. Intimacy often means physical closeness and closeness often means intimate knowledge of the banalities of another persons life. We are genetically hard-wired to respond to this as a signal of intimacy and presence. This may not seem intellectually 'important' but it is of the greatest emotional import. An awarness of the banalities of anothers existence seems to trigger those hormones that tell our bodies that 'Yes we are close, we are intimate, this feels good, i can turn to this person when I have something important to say' We often forget this. It is easy to overlook. Forgetting this is the first step to drifting apart. Banalities and trivia are ordinarily only communicated to those who are nearby physically as well as nearby emotionally. When we try to keep the glue of a relationshiop together with someone who is emotionally close to us but physically far away we do it over the phone or IM or whatever. And we really need to make an extra special effort to maintain intimacy because we are very likely to lose touch with all their day-to-day trivia and banality. None of the information seems worthy enough a subject for a phone call or other mediated communication. But then when something important is happening in someones life it is difficult for them to share it with someone who hasn't been aware of the contextual trivia leading up to that point. Twitter helps us to get back some of what is otherwise lost. It is lightweight, informal and so accommodating of low value and low expectation broadcasts that it is an important new channel in that it is able to bear the otherwise unbearable lightness of trivia in a way that other telecomms tools cannot.

[Aayush Iyer]

Being completely neutral here, do you see Twitter as information itself or just another way to find information? For now, the only reason I use twitter is to give quick blurbs that aren't worth a blog post.

[Kathleen]

Niall Larkin, that is beautifully put. It is something I've tried to express to a faraway friend of mine; now I can use some of your words to do that!

[Jim Long]

The beauty of Twitter is that it gives you choices in the level of participation, from total immersion to occasional postings. Kantor's comments are a bit much. For one thing, only the cool kids are using Twitter so it's not likely to be the downfall of mankind that Mr. Kantor predicts.

When people Twitter about "making coffee", I immediately identify with them. (the banal) When I see a Twitter from Stowe Boyd about this topic( the more useful) - guess what! I click on the link! If Kantor can't see any merit in that, I guess the only decision for him is simply not to Twitter.

Kudos to him for coming here to engage in conversation with you though Mr. Boyd. I work in mainstream media and have been telling anyone who'll listen that reporters and producers should be discovering and participating in the online conversations about their coverage.

[Tom Mandel]

Twitter is more about feeling accompanied/witnessed than about information. If the guy in the next cube says "I'm going to lunch," he's not giving you information exactly. He's sort of acting out a part of his social relation to you -- or something like that.

Many people nowadays work alone at a computer. I'm sitting in my home office right now, for example. No one is here but me and Sky, my golden retriever. When he walks from one place to another and lowers himself with a sigh, it's not information, but it is warm-feeling; it's a connection.

Twitter offers that sense of ambient sociality. Sometimes, you get information too, but that's not its main benefit.