Uneasy Rhetoric

Twitter is the new e-mail.  I don’t mean that it’s the new “killer app” or that it will replace more established modes of communication like talking or writing or texting, as I see it as a hybrid of email and IM.

No, Twitter is the new e-mail because of what it does to my psyche.  When I first got email, back in 1988 or 1989, I wanted everyone to have it. I would check it often, even though up until the early 1990s the only other people I knew with email were fellow college students and checking email was so inconvenient, talking over lunch was far more efficient.  To check our email we had to go to the computer center, get onto a computer, boot up our terminal software, log in to the UNIX system, boot up pine or elm or whatever tree we were using then, and read our email in tiny text.

Twitter is far easier to use and, as a result, I find myself checking it constantly, even though I have more fingers than people I’m following.  More to the point, I’m fascinated by the mundane details that people report because, realistically, there’s only so much you can say in 140 characters.  But I want all my friends to be on Twitter.  All my real life friends, anyway, so that I can feel like I’m staying connected, even if they live in St. Louis, Little Rock, or Paris.

But really, is that such a good thing?  I already see email as somewhat impersonal, as something that will never take the place of a phone call (which is why my friend in Little Rock never hears from me).  If he Twittered his life it might be interesting, it might make me feel a tenuous connection, but realistically, isn’t it more important that I talk to him?  After all, we were close all through college, he’s the reason I got involved in politics, and I even flew to Little Rock to be an usher at his wedding (he didn’t come to mine, but we’ll let that slide for now).  Frankly, a phone call works better, no matter how many tweets I can string together.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see what people are writing on Twitter.

(by the way, one great use for Twitter is to have constant, new, meaningless content on my blog.  Want other uses for Twitter?)