CyberFootprint

I’m on Twitter now. What does it mean? I’ve been able to observe a few changes that I would like to share.

Removing gaps

There are more opportunities to engage in conversations with many other fellow tweeters. Twitter makes your social network grow even more. It also nearly eliminates gaps from one’s life. There are increasingly fewer empty gaps in human interaction – blogging (up to 1 week gap), e-mailing (up to 1 day gap), facebooking (up to 6 hours gap), and now twittering (instantaneous via TweetDeck). I feel like I am getting wired and my eyes will soon start reading the Matrix source code. Yes, you might object that the aforementioned time gaps vary. Yes they do. However, on a large scale, this measure is quite valid.

Different metaphor

Neil Postman contended that the media is the metaphor. The trick is to find out which one fits the given medium the most. Here are two basic metaphors I borrowed from the web of ideas.

• Blog: a room where you lead the conversation and set the agenda. It’s difficult to get the audience in, but when you do, they will pay much more attention.
• Twitter: a loud room where anyone can overhear bits and pieces of your conversation and join in at will.

The way we are able to perceive the medium (via the metaphor) fundamentally changes our understanding of it. Social media policies that apply for Facebook and blogs will not be able to stand their ground on Twitter.

Shift of mindset

As was already discussed, social media and technology turns perfectly reasonable humans into mindless zombies drooling for instant gratification. That happens to me too.

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PS: The image is not credited. It’s not because I don’t want to give the credit to its author, but because I don’t know who the author is. I dug up the image in my archive, and I can’t trace it back to its source. If you are the author, contact me and I will credit you properly.