I really felt for Barack Obama when he became president, and found that he was not going to be allowed to use his BlackBerry handheld device because of security concerns. While it's turned out that he can actually use the gadget for some communications, his initial distress was something I could relate to. There's a reason people call them "crackberries," because these handheld email/phone/internet/calendar/phone book/calculator/alarm clock devices are addictive.
So while I am not a particular fan of the new microblogging phenomenon called Twitter, I am also not ready to cast stones from within the glass house of my own BlackBerry addiction.
Hmmm… if I were doing this on Twitter, I’d have to rewrite that last sentence like this to make it fit Twitter’s 140-character limit: not a real fan of new microblog phenom called Twitter, but also not ready to cast stones ‘cause of own BlackBerry addiction. (Whew! Just made it – 124 characters.)
And therein lies Twitter's saving grace - its brevity. I don't know about you, but I have long felt that everything - books, movies, concerts, theater pieces, Lost - could be shorter. Doesn't anybody believe in editors anymore? Well at Twitter, there's an automatic editorial policy, draconian though it is. 140 characters and you're done.
And yet, Twitter proves that even something this short can be full of Too Much Information. This is what seems to annoy the Twaters (Tweetspeak for Twitter Haters) - the fact that 90% of most tweets are basically "What I'm Doing Right Now" things. Most people seem to tweet simply because they can. Well you know what else you can do? Not sign up. I haven't, and I really don't feel like I'm missing anything, because the very same self-absorbed, instant-gratification, must-tell-everyone technonarcissism that some people ascribe to Twitter means that IF someone sends a tweet that really is worth 20 seconds of your time, someone will email it and I'll get it on my good old-fashioned BlackBerry. Trent Reznor doesn't like the new Chris Cornell record? I won't feel inadequate because you knew it 5 minutes before I did.
So what's this all about? Is it just a new way of staking your claim to BE someone? As the redoubtable bass player Melvin Gibbs says, "back in the day when you wanted everybody to know who you were you tagged trains." (Actually he says this in a tweet marked "7:16 AM Mar 15th from web.") I now also know that Melvin has some remixes to finish. Hope he can get them done before he joins us for the second half of today's show. Me, I've got a Chris Cornell record to check out.
Tell us: Do you tweet? Do you find it useful for concert info, song links, etc?
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John Schaefer has hosted Soundcheck since the show’s inception in 2002. He has also hosted and produced WNYC’s radio series New Sounds since 1982 (“The No. 1 radio show for the Global Village” – Billboard) and the New Sounds Live concert series since 1986.
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