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I realized then that tweeting is the greatest endeavor a procrastinator could want. See, in those days, there was personality in it. There was respect, comradeship, reciprocity. Hashtags that had never been tagged before. Today, it’s all cutthroat, clichéd and dry, and there’s no chance for bringing friendship to bear—no personality. You see what I mean?
I realized then that tweeting is the greatest endeavor a procrastinator could want. See, in those days, there was personality in it. There was respect, comradeship, reciprocity. Hashtags that had never been tagged before. Today, it’s all cutthroat, clichéd and dry, and there’s no chance for bringing friendship to bear—no personality. You see what I mean?
They don’t retweet me anymore!
”from ”WILLY LOMAN CONTEMPLATES TWITTERCIDE”.
Via McSweeney’s
“This essay examines social media content leading up to the presidential elections in May 2012. It provides ten interactive graphs to illustrate public opinion expressed on Twitter. These graphs represent sentiment and semantic analyses of over two million tweets from seventeen hashtag feeds posted 10 April 2012 through 24 May 2012. The following hashtags are in the study: #egyelections, #egypresiden, #egypt as well as the Arabic hashtags شفيق# حمدين# ,انتخابات_الرئاسة# ,العباسيه# ,ابوالفتوح# ,خالد_على# , موسى# ,مرسي# ,#مصر….The data visualizations generated seek to illustrate and improve our understanding of the sensibilities and cultural logic(s)3 that are being expressed by the people on Twitter. It is not to say philosophical underpinnings to the nature of a virtual world are new and revelatory; nor does this argument purport that the what is being expressed online in the digital world is necessarily representative of what happens on the ground. In places like Egypt where literacy rates only reach 66%4, analyses of Internet penetration hold less weight5.”
Via http://www.jadaliyya.com - This is a great resource for essays about all things Middle Eastern politics and culture.
“The key to understanding this is that while writing did displace the value of memory, the vast abundance of printed material it did something else also, something less remarked upon, both to the shape of our public sphere and also to our psychodynamics. It replaced the natural, visceral human oral psychodynamics with those of literate and written ones. Most of us are so awash in this new form that we notice it as much as fish notice water; however, writing is but a blip and the printed from a flash in human history. Orality, on the other hand, is perhaps the most human of our characteristics, and ironically, the comeback of which into the public sphere is the one Keller is lamenting while worrying about losing our human characteristics. What he seems to actually mean is that, with the advent of writing and printing, we *acquired* these new cognitive tools and novel psychodynamic [and I should note that they never took that much root in most recesses of culture and thus remain fragile] and they are threatened by social media which re-introduces older forms which, of course, never died out but receded from public importance.”
If you’re not reading Technosociology, then you are missing out on intelligent and insightful analyses of human culture in the digital world.
sometimes I wonder about the algorithm used to determine who I should “follow” on Twitter. Anyone else sense some irony in the use of the word “follow” and Medvedev?
And then this showed up in my gmail. I am fairly amused with myself, even if I think the account is run by one of his graduate research assistants.
Insight: The more you talk about yourself on Twitter, the more your follower count decreases. Finally, some numbers to back up what most of us already knew.
Via Dan Zarrella
Note: Dan Zarrella’s research on social media is fantastic because, unlike other ‘social media experts,’ Zarrella bases his insights off of empirical evidence not esoteric speculation.
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Twitter
bell hooks is on Twitter. Consequences will never be the same.
New Social Media Tool: Twinterest is a new application that searches your Twitter account and buckets your interests into various categories based on the content of your tweets. I was impressed with the accuracy of the results (see image above). The “culture” category was hands down the most accurate of all of the categories. The application only allows people to look up their “twinterests” but I suspect that they will create the ability for individuals to find information about other twitter users from their public timelines. If they’re smart, they’ll monetize that option.
“Small Change” dismisses leaderless, self-organizing systems as viable agents of change. A flock of birds flying around an object in flight has no leader yet this beautiful, seemingly choreographed movement is the very embodiment of change. Rudimentary communication among individuals in real time allows many to move together as one—suddenly uniting everyone in a common goal. Lowering the barrier to activism doesn’t weaken humanity, it brings us together and it makes us stronger.”
Twitter founder Biz Stone’s response to Malcolm Gladwell. Via The Atlantic
Populates with tweets about peoples’ “shitty day.” This is either really cool or unbelievably depressing.
@50cent’s tweets translated into (proper English). Such a service is indeed helpful and rather witty in tenor.
For More: @english50cent
How to shut your friends up online, or a few tactics for proper digital etiquette.
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Modern & Im/material Things
I'm Christina Dennaoui. I like cultural analysis, technology, and electronic music. I make beats. I drink bourbon. I'm a nice lady, so you should talk to me. Content Areas: Electronic Music, Critical Theory, Media Studies, Technology, Digital Culture
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