Twitter, Tweets, and All That Noise

I really do not like Twitter. I signed up a few months ago just to see what the fuss was about, and just abandoned my account within a couple of days, which from what I read is not unusual.

This whole notion of letting the whole world know every single thing you are thinking and doing at every moment of time is just nonsense. When Governor Rick Perry tweets that he just finished a sandwich at some shop in Austin, why should I care? Sure, the sandwich shop owner loves it, it's a free plug. But do we really need to know this stuff? No, we don't.

Ashton Kuchter has over a million Twitter friends. Why should I care? I don't. And in 140/160 characters, there's no chance for thoughtful reflection (a point observed by many), which to me negates the value of a post on some important issue right off the bat.

Twitter is all of these people all over the world trying to proclaim that they are worth noticing. I think there are far better and more interesting ways to do that, because, yes, people are worth noticing, but not in the way Twitter has become. Twitter is, to me, an orgy of narcissism.

Except for the really meaningful use of Twitter - reporting events as they happen. I appreciated that during the recent protests in Iran, the only news outlet not blocked was Twitter, because Twitter didn't have a single server site. So the news got out.

If Twitter could be used for this purpose, it deserves to stay. Or as a kind of reminder message service, e.g. "Be sure to stop by the library tonight for a fabulous cello concert!"

I just finished reading a book called The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness. The setting is a world of incessant noise - all the males can hear all of the other males' thoughts, besides what they actually say. Here is what a character has to say about it:
" 'Everything. That's what New World is. Informayshun [sic], all the time, never stopping, whether you want it or not. The Spackle knew it, evolved to live with it, but we weren't equipped for it. Not even close. And too much informayshun becomes just Noise. And it never, never stops.' " (p.391).

So there ya go. Noise, Noise, Noise. Why would I want that?