Hour long, but really good

This is kind of a follow up to the Zizek piece from the Guardian below. What can be done to reform the Republic for which it stands. This video is an hour or so, and you should watch it. @Google: Lawrence Lessig: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It youtube.com - In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal...

Twitter-stuff: thanks for all the RT?

This is just a quick reflection on normative behaviour and a short personal declaration. I don't thank people for passing along what I have to say, and, while I don't specifically hold it against others when they do so, I do question their motivation. And I have unfollowed people for doing it excessively.

I don't use Twitter for strictly promotional purpose, and if you do, more power to you, especially if you are promoting a product or service I actually use. But I wonder, what is actually happening when you publically thank me for passing along your message? Well, yes, I am getting the thank you, and there is some reciprocation, if one or more of your subscribers decides to add me to to their subscription lists, but this is not likely, particularly if you thank a number of people in a single tweet.

Basically, what I understand when somebody thanks me for passing along a message is "thank you, please do it again" - which is all fine and good, but to be honest, if you were to come out and ask me to "plz RT" or whatever, I would be less likely to do so, and the same goes for a lot of the "thx 4 RT" I see - it makes me feel like I'm being played. So please don't bother.

If you disagree with this belief, let me know. I'm not a rude person, I thank people all the time for all sorts of things. But I'm not going to thank someone for carrying on a conversation with me.

Twitter Retweet Follow/Unfollow

I really have only one thing to add to the ongoing discussion of the new Twitter Retweet integration, other than the obvious, that I use a third party client so I don't really care.

I am noticing that when somebody in my network retweets somebody who is not in my network from the Twitter home page, I see:

1. the retweet,
   
2. a message telling me "Wondering who this is? Someone you follow thought this was worth retweeting, which is why you are seeing it in your Home timeline."

Is this valuable? Perhaps! The obvious reason is that I may want to follow the person who is being retweeted... but the more obtuse value? I may want to unfollow the person who is doing the retweeting, based on the people with whom they keep company. This may actually be more valuable to me in the long run.

If Twitter gave me the option to follow the person I am not following, or unfollow the person I am following, I would absolutely love this feature.

The News Garden and the Wire

Full disclosure: When I created this 'blog, the name "eardrum buzz" was a catchy phrase, and there was always the possibility that I might get a bit of free publicity if electro-hipsters Wire decided to sue me over fair use of the title from one of their songs. So I am guilty also of link-baiting with the title of this post.

What if Twitter were to take the direct access they have to their own data-flow and shift focus to curation? What if Twitter presented not only currently trending topics but also mined this data further, to provide analysis of the people who trended the topic?

Facebook is acquiring FriendFeed, and I find myself agreeing almost exactly with Robert Scoble that FaceBook is just not an appropriate place to conduct public conversations, even though creating a space for conducting semi-private conversations is not such a bad thing.

I go to Facebook to catch up on current affairs in my personal sphere, such as people's birthdays I might be missing. It is a garden where I can share news with friends, but... there is no discussion. Facebook will have to offer me a great deal more in the way of current affairs in the world at large for me to check in more often than once a week.

By drawing resources away from FriendFeed, is Facebook setting its targets on Twitter? No more than it already has. Twitter and FriendFeed are both networking tools; Facebook is not.

But what if Twitter shifted away from the notion of connecting me with existing contacts? The Suggested User List is a step in this direction, though arguably, a misstep. The thing Twitter really offers me that I find nowhere else is the immediacy of trending topics. And by immediacy, I mean that by the time a topic has trended, it has developed to the point where it cannot be ignored. In this sense, immediacy describes a combination of presence and latency.

But, this still has more immediacy for me than than CNN.

So.

What if Twitter were to shift focus to curation? In other words, when a topic trends, what if Twitter told me what group of Twitterers originated the topic? I could use this information. If Twitter did this for me, I would rely on trends and the public stream more than my own personal network, because this would cut the distance between me and an ostensibly reliable source of information.

And I would follow these people.

If Twitter curated a list of the users who have consistently been involved in the early phase of trending topics, clearly, these would be people I would want to follow (if I was interested in these topics), would they not? My assumption here is that by the time a topic trends, it has become reliable. Perhaps by the time a topic trends, it has already become stale. I would argue, it has become stable.

But this would be my ideal Twitter. A public stream that brings me closer and closer to the immediacy of "What is happening, right now."

Writers who Tweet

Following is a group of writers who I have been following in Twitter. They are all professional, in that they all would like to get paid for what they are doing. The phrase "professional writer" is undergoing some growing pains at the moment, much like the phrase "professional journalism," but simply put, most people want to get paid for what they do at some point, and we need the professionals in these estates, as much as we need the amateurs.

@bruces - Bruce Sterling wrote one of my favourite science fiction novels, Schismatrix; as well, Sterling's early cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades set the stage for an entire genre. Sterling doesn't post as often as I'd like, but when he does, I always pay attention. A writer with his eye on the future.

@GreatDismal - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling collaborated on the steampunk prototype The Difference Engine, and it was William Gibson who has consistently hammered in the nail of cyberpunk. He is interviewed in a fantastic film No Maps for These Territories.

@1889ca - MCM is creator of Rollbots, animated mayhem currently showing on YTV in Canada, and soon elsewhere around the world. MCM is actively searching for different ways to perform and commoditize the process and distribution of writing. Also insane.

@scalzi - John Scalzi has written numerous fiction and non-fiction books, notably The Last Colony. He lives in Ohio, so when he tweets about finishing his writing quota for the day at 2.00 on the west coast, I have to realize it is dinner time in the east. Also a creative consultant for Stargate: Universe, which should get interesting.

@agnieszkasshoes - Dan Holloway is writing a novel on Facebook called The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes. He also blogs and is a member of the Year Zero Writers collective. When Dan tweets from the U.K., it is either really late on the west coast, or really early in the U.K.

I realize these are all male writers, and I will try to rectify that with a future list. Elizabeth Hand, possibly my favourite living writer, blogs at LiveJournal as the +1 in the Inferior 4+1, but refuses to tweet.

Please leave comments on female writers who tweet!