Comments on Tangential Convergence: Episode 28 - Jesus is The Flash

Stumbled across something reading Heinlein... In t...

2011-09-23T13:56:22.159-04:00

Stumbled across something reading Heinlein... In the Lazarus Long books, where people live into the hundreds of years, when a topic comes up (in a social setting) that makes one uncomfortable, a single word, "privacy," stops the line of inquiry.

Guessing that if you live for 500 years, you must have spent at least a decade doing something really stupid, and society has adjusted for it. Like those Spring Break pics idiots post to Facebook?

A few months back, there was a tornado here in Tex...

2011-07-23T02:40:51.795-04:00

A few months back, there was a tornado here in Texas. Not a huge one, but more than enough to do some damage. Of course, I'm using twitter/identica on my cell-phone, hammering out "no funnel-cloud yet," or "is that a...", and "you can't imagine how much this SUCKS!" and as many hash-tags that I can fit into 140 characters.

dbrodbeck@twitter.com hits back two minutes later: 'Holy shit dude, stay safe.' Before family, friends, or anyone on identica. Fast.

The technology behind the network is irrelevant compared to the human component, in this case, someone on the other side of the North American continent saying "stay safe." My social network works just fine the way it is...

@Jim thank you for listening! @Rachel Yeah the id...

2011-07-22T07:33:51.895-04:00

@Jim thank you for listening!

@Rachel Yeah the idea of the sort of social media echo chamber and how we all go to say blogs or listen to podcasts that mirror our thoughts, yes I agree. I wonder though, like, is it actually the case that we are any different than before. I mean except for a brief period in the 20th century, news and political reporting was all pretty much biased, one way or the other, and I think people chose their media appropriately. The twitter as cocktail party metaphor is perfect.

I most sincerely hope this posts because the last ...

2011-07-21T15:31:08.436-04:00

I most sincerely hope this posts because the last two times, I wrote a long post and nada. So I will make this short, and it will post, right?

So...my first, entirely unoriginal, comment would be to point out that rather than encouraging intelligent discourse, social media all too often seem to create little enclaves where like-minded people can tell each other how wise they are. (Not that I don't enjoy that. But it's hard to find actual civil debate on social media. We could talk about why--which is to say, you could perhaps talk about why one episode. Ha.)

Second...Perhaps it would help to think of Twitter as a cocktail party (Ick, but stay with me), where you wander around and join conversations that interest you or at least that catch your ear. And a non-response tweet is an offer to start a new conversation, of whatever type you have in mind.

And that's it for today!

Ah, crap. I had almost forgotten I had a blog. Now...

2011-07-21T11:16:50.904-04:00

Ah, crap. I had almost forgotten I had a blog. Now I have to post something in order to keep up with the rest of the internet.

Thanks for putting a new episode out there, guys.