What am I thinking of right now?
Couple of months ago, Arjun showed me this site called TWITTERVISION, where you see a map of the world and every couple of sections a word balloon would pop up on some part of the map and it would be someone leaving a note on this big world map about what they were doing in their part of the world.
At that time, Arjun thought that would make for a nice execution for a TV commercial. (Has anyone done anything like that lately?)
Anyway, I later found out that the foundation of Twittervision was the site / service called Twitter. I eventually got an invitation get a Twitter account, which I did and got excited by the feature that let me text in my “blog entry” or my whatever it was I was Twittering about. It also allowed me to receive (via text) the Twittering of other people.
So, ever now and again I would get a text/Twitter from the people I’m linked up with and I’d get to know little things happening in their day. They’d Twitter about where they were, what they were eating, how their meeting went, and if they were already going home. (I was using to it to pimp my blog and comic book.)
I really wasn’t sure I needed to know all those things about my friends, so I switched off the text function.
Then I got to read this article in WIRED:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson
And he said, Twitter was like “social ESP”. The more technical term he used was “proprioception.”
It's like proprioception, your body's ability to know where your limbs are. That subliminal sense of orientation is crucial for coordination: It keeps you from accidentally bumping into objects, and it makes possible amazing feats of balance and dexterity.
Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.
For example, when I meet Misha for lunch after not having seen her for a month, I already know the wireframe outline of her life: She was nervous about last week's big presentation, got stuck in a rare spring snowstorm, and became addicted to salt bagels. With Dodgeball, I never actually race out to meet a friend when they report their nearby location; I just note it as something to talk about the next time we meet.
The funny thing was, way before Twitter, me and the guys were already talking about how blogging can affect meeting people face to face later on.
With people blogging about their lives so much, conversations might eventually become something like this:
BUDJ: Hey, I got a the latest copy of…
MARK: X-Men! Yeah, I read it your blog.
(silence)
MARK: Did I already show you…
BUDJ: The pictures from your vacation? Saw it in your blog.
(silence)
BUDJ: So… now what?
So, now it gets worse with Twitter.
One Pinoy blogger (and I’m sorry I can’t find your link again) did point out that if you create a Twitter account and just link up with, for example, everyone in your barkada, you could then use Twitter as a cheap way of sending out a text blast to them.
Mark’s been thinking (via Twitter) why the Pinoy (who supposedly resides in the Text Capital of the World) didn’t think of this wonderful idea in the first place.
I think there were attempts in the past.
A long time ago, PinoyExchange allowed people to text in their messages, but the problem was all the messages ended up on just one page. It wasn’t personalized. It just became one massive message thread that was filled with all sorts of topics.
Recently, comic book newsblogs found a great use for Twitter when the whole of geekdom attended the San Diego Comic-Con. Some of them were reporting/Twittering from the convention floor.
Just a matter of time before people figure out what else they can do with it.
So, if you want to know what I had for lunch (for some weird reason), then follow me at Twitter: http://twitter.com/Budjette
Couple of months ago, Arjun showed me this site called TWITTERVISION, where you see a map of the world and every couple of sections a word balloon would pop up on some part of the map and it would be someone leaving a note on this big world map about what they were doing in their part of the world.
At that time, Arjun thought that would make for a nice execution for a TV commercial. (Has anyone done anything like that lately?)
Anyway, I later found out that the foundation of Twittervision was the site / service called Twitter. I eventually got an invitation get a Twitter account, which I did and got excited by the feature that let me text in my “blog entry” or my whatever it was I was Twittering about. It also allowed me to receive (via text) the Twittering of other people.
So, ever now and again I would get a text/Twitter from the people I’m linked up with and I’d get to know little things happening in their day. They’d Twitter about where they were, what they were eating, how their meeting went, and if they were already going home. (I was using to it to pimp my blog and comic book.)
I really wasn’t sure I needed to know all those things about my friends, so I switched off the text function.
Then I got to read this article in WIRED:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson
And he said, Twitter was like “social ESP”. The more technical term he used was “proprioception.”
It's like proprioception, your body's ability to know where your limbs are. That subliminal sense of orientation is crucial for coordination: It keeps you from accidentally bumping into objects, and it makes possible amazing feats of balance and dexterity.
Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.
For example, when I meet Misha for lunch after not having seen her for a month, I already know the wireframe outline of her life: She was nervous about last week's big presentation, got stuck in a rare spring snowstorm, and became addicted to salt bagels. With Dodgeball, I never actually race out to meet a friend when they report their nearby location; I just note it as something to talk about the next time we meet.
The funny thing was, way before Twitter, me and the guys were already talking about how blogging can affect meeting people face to face later on.
With people blogging about their lives so much, conversations might eventually become something like this:
BUDJ: Hey, I got a the latest copy of…
MARK: X-Men! Yeah, I read it your blog.
(silence)
MARK: Did I already show you…
BUDJ: The pictures from your vacation? Saw it in your blog.
(silence)
BUDJ: So… now what?
So, now it gets worse with Twitter.
One Pinoy blogger (and I’m sorry I can’t find your link again) did point out that if you create a Twitter account and just link up with, for example, everyone in your barkada, you could then use Twitter as a cheap way of sending out a text blast to them.
Mark’s been thinking (via Twitter) why the Pinoy (who supposedly resides in the Text Capital of the World) didn’t think of this wonderful idea in the first place.
I think there were attempts in the past.
A long time ago, PinoyExchange allowed people to text in their messages, but the problem was all the messages ended up on just one page. It wasn’t personalized. It just became one massive message thread that was filled with all sorts of topics.
Recently, comic book newsblogs found a great use for Twitter when the whole of geekdom attended the San Diego Comic-Con. Some of them were reporting/Twittering from the convention floor.
Just a matter of time before people figure out what else they can do with it.
So, if you want to know what I had for lunch (for some weird reason), then follow me at Twitter: http://twitter.com/Budjette
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