funsec mailing list archives
Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care
From: "B.K. DeLong" <bkdelong () pobox com>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:27:43 -0400
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org> wrote:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 01:06:35AM -0700, Paul Ferguson wrote:I already have a blog, which allows me to publish content in more than 140 characters. What is the allure? Please, tell me.Ah, it appeals directly to the "sound bite" crowd -- those who prefer information (including news) delivered to them in snippets, easily digested with the smallest cognitive effort. These are people who reduce politics to slogans and philosophy to bumper stickers. They're largely incapable and/or unwilling of reading -- let alone writing -- anything substantive, cogent and nuanced. These are the people for whom "Headline News" equates to "serious journalism", and whose attention span is so short that they require an "executive summary" for a one page document. And these are the people whose bloated egos are such that they imagine the rest of world is actually interested in their off-the-cuff random remarks. Oh, there *are* a few -- very few -- people whose wit and intelligence are such that their odd musings are possibly of interest; but most of those people have the humility to realize that even their prose usually requires care in composition and editing before publication. ---Rsk
This post has been full of nothing but sad curmudgeons grumbling about "new-fangled technology" and "how good the old stuff works so why change?" I must say I am incredibly amused at Rsk's particularly troll-like brush of a statement claiming in short that the audience for "micro blogging" is a bunch of vapid, idiots with no attention span and gigantic egos. Whatever. I certainly don't consider myself a part of that canvas. Well, with the exception of the "attention span" part. I have ADHD. It comes with the territory - it doesn't mean I'm less intelligent or capable of deep, prognosticative thought (nor, it seems a bit of grammaticidal word-play either). The summer before college, being the geeky nerd I was, I got access to my Net account before I got on campus and figured out what I had access to. So when school started, I discovered a small group of Grad Students, Staff and Researchers very enthusiastic about this World Wide Web under development (1994). With the help of someone connected to the IT group, I created a Web site in my student account space that was an email directory for my entire high school graduating class - a way for all my friends to find each other post college, thanks to the LDAP directories easily accessible at most colleges and Universities that most of them had absolutely no clue about when they were in HS with me. I "advertised" it on the local college UseNet group and when the IT org discovered it, they brought me (my case) before the Provost for non-academic use of the University's resources. I was not made aware of this - members of the World Wide Web Working Group apparently went in my stead. At that meeting, the Head of all University IT and the Director of Networks said "the Web is a fad, it will come and go as fast as GOPHER". That's what this discussion reminds me of. Now personally, I have a different way or working with information. Because of said ADHD, I do require some systems that allow for the avoidance of the tl;dr effect. I get a lot of email. So much so that I'm at 83% of GMail account #2 since 1994. I subscribe to listserves, email notifications for forums, blog posts etc. I absorb information through categorization and prioritization. I listen to books on CD and through various other mediums. But it doesn't mean when I need to sit down on a cozy chair in front of a fireplace and read a book, that I cannot. Nor does it mean if I am impassioned to author a thought-piece on the ridiculousness of social media critics who claim the breakdown of societal communications is due to a technological offering that limits the amount of words in a single thought-post to 140 characters. This is also tangential to an argument I have with a relative regarding his belief in building and hosting open source or duplicative versions of cloud or Web service-based offerings because he does not trust 3rd party services. While I do not hold full trust in "Do No Evil" and Facebook certainly tried to pull some massive BS over IP ownership claims of user content, enough of that community raised their voices instead of deleting and running away to a different service or their own that they changed their mind - even the big, bad Facebook. But to suggest that I am seeking the least cognitive denominator or am "incapable of reading or writing anything substantive, cogent or nuanced is frankly an overgeneralized, elitist, poorly-thought out statement. Just because I take a different cognitive approach to my Web interactions does not mean I could not sit down and write a Masters thesis or well-cited dissertation on any number of subjects. The world is changing - regardless of how much umbrage you take with this, it is not going to stop, slow down or go backwards because you want it to. Now, while I do fancy making up the occasional word in favor of a little bombast, I will not condone absolute grammatical laziness when it comes to instant messaging or texting whenever possible. Sometimes tweeting does not allow for that - so I simply must figure out how to say what I'm looking for in the limited characters I am allotted. Nonetheless, knock it off with the trolling. If you're going to criticize Twitter as a communications medium or even "microblogging" and more future "Web 2.0" tools as a whole, please try to come up with more intelligent critical thought that does not involve insulting the intelligence and cognitive abilities of those who use and enjoy those services. It just pisses us off. Thanks. -- B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) bkdelong () pobox com +1.617.797.8471 http://www.wkdelong.org Family. http://www.ianetsec.com Work. http://bkdelong.livejournal.com Life. PGP Fingerprint: 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5 A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE FOAF: http://foaf.brain-stream.org _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
Current thread:
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care, (continued)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care Imri Goldberg (Mar 16)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care Gadi Evron (Mar 16)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care Imri Goldberg (Mar 16)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care Paul Ferguson (Mar 16)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care Paul M. Moriarty (Mar 17)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care Donal (Mar 17)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care Imri Goldberg (Mar 16)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care David M Chess (Mar 17)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care Gadi Evron (Mar 16)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care David M Chess (Mar 17)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care Gadi Evron (Mar 18)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care David Harley (Mar 18)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care David M Chess (Mar 18)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care der Mouse (Mar 18)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care ultramegaman (Mar 18)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care David M Chess (Mar 19)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care der Mouse (Mar 19)
- Re: Tweet This: I Don't Care David M Chess (Mar 19)