skeletron
Member
Seems my original thread vanished. Odd...
Anyway, a reply to not 'getting' Twitter and similar networking tools that I didn't get a chance to post:
Thanks.
Anyway, a reply to not 'getting' Twitter and similar networking tools that I didn't get a chance to post:
Thanks.
funkaoshi
Well-known
I post little messages about my day there. It's interesting to see what your friends are up to, or to check out the trends topics. It's probably one of the most interesting things to be developed in recent years, especially since it's a very simple idea.
photogdave
Shops local
Well if you read my brief post before it was deleted I hope you understood I was having a laugh.
Anyway, like internet forums, Flickr etc., Twitter has the ability to be a useful tool in capable hands. It just seems to fall into so many incapable hands!
Also, I'm kind of tired of seeing so many people constantly "jacked in" to their little portable devices, always typing and scrolling - "twittering" if you will, and not really paying attention to what's going on around them.
I have friends in their 30s like this, so I'm not just blaming the younger crowd. These guys can barely stay engaged in a conversation because they're checking hockey stats or trash talking on hockey pool forums while we're all out at dinner!
Anyway, like internet forums, Flickr etc., Twitter has the ability to be a useful tool in capable hands. It just seems to fall into so many incapable hands!
Also, I'm kind of tired of seeing so many people constantly "jacked in" to their little portable devices, always typing and scrolling - "twittering" if you will, and not really paying attention to what's going on around them.
I have friends in their 30s like this, so I'm not just blaming the younger crowd. These guys can barely stay engaged in a conversation because they're checking hockey stats or trash talking on hockey pool forums while we're all out at dinner!
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skeletron
Member
I agree that the signal to noise ratio is abysmal on these things, but that's standard for any publicly accessible medium. Look at youtube, or flikr, or the wide wold of blogs. For every gem you find, you sift through a ton of trash. I'm just curious to see if anyone has found any gems they want to share.
And I agree again on the decline of etiquette when it comes to mobile devices. When it's dinner or drinks or anything else face-to-face, my phone is silent and remains in my pocket (at least until I go to the restroom). Grocery stores are fair game, though. Especially when I'm looking up a recipe.
And I agree again on the decline of etiquette when it comes to mobile devices. When it's dinner or drinks or anything else face-to-face, my phone is silent and remains in my pocket (at least until I go to the restroom). Grocery stores are fair game, though. Especially when I'm looking up a recipe.
Tuolumne
Veteran
Tuolumne
Veteran
I was at a NY Philharmonic concert in Avery Fisher Hall last year, in the balcony. As I looked down, so help me, every single lap was aglow with the light of a Blackberry. I asked the person seated in the row just below me what they were doing with their Blackberry. I really wanted to know what could be so all-fired important at 8:00 PM in a concert hall. They looked at me with utter contempt, as if I had transgressed a most scared social cow. Go know!
/T
feenej
Well-known
I went to breakfast with a woman who kept getting calls on her cell phone. I really, really wanted to tell her that she should just rather go out with the three people she keeps in her purse at all times.
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ZeissFan
Veteran
Twitter, so far, is the epitome of self-absorbed shallow behavior.
I say "so far," because surely there will be something else just around the corner that will top this.
I've written a rant about Blackberry users, which basically goes like this:
The only thing worse than the Blackberry and its ilk are those who own them. You can't hold an intelligent conversation, because they're mesmerized by this thing. It beeps, buzzes and yelps, begging for their attention.
While you try to explain the intricacies of something that might save their life, they're playing with this damn thing. It makes you want to reach out and slap it out of their hands.
They can't put it down for more than a few seconds at a time. They're scrolling, tapping, playing with it constantly. I would expect that it gets more attention than their spouse, child or pet ... and possibly their job.
Surely, their life is more important than mine, because I can barely hold their attention. I yearn for the time when it wasn't necessary to have a phone attached to your ear, or worse yet, a Bluetooth device hanging from the side of your head like a Borg. By the way, look in the mirror some time and see how stupid you look.
Basically, it's something like that.
I say "so far," because surely there will be something else just around the corner that will top this.
I've written a rant about Blackberry users, which basically goes like this:
* * *
The only thing worse than the Blackberry and its ilk are those who own them. You can't hold an intelligent conversation, because they're mesmerized by this thing. It beeps, buzzes and yelps, begging for their attention.
While you try to explain the intricacies of something that might save their life, they're playing with this damn thing. It makes you want to reach out and slap it out of their hands.
They can't put it down for more than a few seconds at a time. They're scrolling, tapping, playing with it constantly. I would expect that it gets more attention than their spouse, child or pet ... and possibly their job.
Surely, their life is more important than mine, because I can barely hold their attention. I yearn for the time when it wasn't necessary to have a phone attached to your ear, or worse yet, a Bluetooth device hanging from the side of your head like a Borg. By the way, look in the mirror some time and see how stupid you look.
* * *
Basically, it's something like that.
skeletron
Member
You go ahead and focus on the negative, if that suits you. I'll continue to explore all these emerging ways to use our communications technology as a tool to find new topics, new music, and new ways to approach the things I enjoy.
calexg
Established
I post to my Twitter (Woohoo, shameless advertising! http://twitter.com/calexg) but to be honest I'm not really sure why I do. I think I use it like a mini-blog. I try to summarise my thoughts and ideas into one or two short sentences. Unfortunately my friends don't use twitter so mine hasn't seen a lot of action.
jmarcus
Well-known
I'm on twitter, over 5000 updates now.
amateriat
We're all light!
This is intersting. An ex-GF is insisting I get hip with Facebook. Galfriend's sister in Iceland thinks we should both get on with Facebook. An associate asked why I don't have a smartphone like a BlackBerry or iPhone. Someone else raved about Twitter.
I don't do Facebook, I don't Tweet, and I won't invest any more than the $70 I paid via Craigslist for my Motorola E815 to allow people to pester me most anywhere I am. The near-seamlessness of telecommunication is both a miracle and curse. The miracle, of course, is that people can be in touch with you wherver you might be, at any given time. The curse? Repeat the previous line.
Mind you, I like being able to talk to or text someone (when I don't particularly feel like talking to that person) wherever I am. But there's a reason for there being a "silent" mode on the ringer, and an "off" button for the device itself. Either one can and will be engaged at mealtime, at a recital, concert, or film, when I'm at a bar with friends, or engaged in a particularly deep conversation with practically anyone. It's about the near-lost art of setting personal boundaries: people either learn to respect them, or walk off cursing under their breath. (Naturally, I'd prefer the former.)
A good friend of mine gave up her BlackBerry a while back for this very reason: the expectation of her being always available, and the sheer additive aspects of the device (it didn't get the nickname "crackberry" for nothing) drove her nuts. Smart woman, I say.
As for broadcasting the goings-on of my life: I don't don't know ho many extra hours there are in other people's days, but I know I'd be filling mine out a bit too much via Tweets and Facebook entries (and hearing complaints about why I don't update more than I do). It's bad enough that I have two blogs i ignore a bit more than I'd like, spend a good deal of time here (like you didn't figure that out), and try to make time to work on my photo archive, work on printing, plot new plans for future exhibits, print submissions, a website (hopefully), and maybe, once in a while, break out the cameras, grab a bunch of rolls of film, grab the bike or hop on a train or reach for my best walking shoes and disappear from everyone I know (and, in a few cases, deeply love) for the better part of a day or two.
Oh...and I'd like to catch up a bit on some reading. And writing.
So, no Tweets or Facebook chatter. The world can get on without my presence there. And no smartphones. The technology I have at hand right now carves a big enough black hole in my everyday.
- Barrett
I don't do Facebook, I don't Tweet, and I won't invest any more than the $70 I paid via Craigslist for my Motorola E815 to allow people to pester me most anywhere I am. The near-seamlessness of telecommunication is both a miracle and curse. The miracle, of course, is that people can be in touch with you wherver you might be, at any given time. The curse? Repeat the previous line.
Mind you, I like being able to talk to or text someone (when I don't particularly feel like talking to that person) wherever I am. But there's a reason for there being a "silent" mode on the ringer, and an "off" button for the device itself. Either one can and will be engaged at mealtime, at a recital, concert, or film, when I'm at a bar with friends, or engaged in a particularly deep conversation with practically anyone. It's about the near-lost art of setting personal boundaries: people either learn to respect them, or walk off cursing under their breath. (Naturally, I'd prefer the former.)
A good friend of mine gave up her BlackBerry a while back for this very reason: the expectation of her being always available, and the sheer additive aspects of the device (it didn't get the nickname "crackberry" for nothing) drove her nuts. Smart woman, I say.
As for broadcasting the goings-on of my life: I don't don't know ho many extra hours there are in other people's days, but I know I'd be filling mine out a bit too much via Tweets and Facebook entries (and hearing complaints about why I don't update more than I do). It's bad enough that I have two blogs i ignore a bit more than I'd like, spend a good deal of time here (like you didn't figure that out), and try to make time to work on my photo archive, work on printing, plot new plans for future exhibits, print submissions, a website (hopefully), and maybe, once in a while, break out the cameras, grab a bunch of rolls of film, grab the bike or hop on a train or reach for my best walking shoes and disappear from everyone I know (and, in a few cases, deeply love) for the better part of a day or two.
Oh...and I'd like to catch up a bit on some reading. And writing.
So, no Tweets or Facebook chatter. The world can get on without my presence there. And no smartphones. The technology I have at hand right now carves a big enough black hole in my everyday.
- Barrett
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JOE1951
Established
Twitter is cool if you have something to say. I was using a WordPress widget that allowed me to put my twitter "mini updates" from my cellphone on a side panel on my blog, when I didn't have anything more substantial to post.
Matt(1pt4)
Established
I've got a similar widget on my WP blog. I resisted Twitter for a long time, partly because it seemed utterly ridiculous to tweet that I was going to get coffee. Why would anyone care? Who's the audience for this ephemera? Once I realized that the primary audience for it is me, the whole thing made more sense. As a tool for taking note of those half formed ideas or tracking the trends of your own thought, twitter excels.
calexg
Established
Very, very true. I'm in the same boat. I don't own a mobile phone but I love the idea of Twitter and think that if used properly it could be quite handy, BUT it certainly does take a lot of time. Not to mention the privacy you give up when you partake.
funkaoshi
Well-known
People can be curmudgeonly about stuff like this all they like, but twitter is surprisingly useful. It's generally the fast source for me to find out if there are problems with the TTC (Toronto's public transit). When there was a city wide black out, it was also a great source for little tidbits of information and news. I can usually ask a question and get a worthwhile answer in a few minutes. It's incredibly useful. The signal to noise is only bad if you read the public timeline, or follow 5000 people. Don't do that. Be smart, and it's a (surprisingly) great service.
bmattock
Veteran
I don't like Twitter. Or, to be more clear, I don't care about Twitter. It doesn't bother me that it exists - I simply have no use for it.
I have no Facebook account. I get lots of email from people I know, trying to get me to sign up. No way. My nieces talked me into signing up on MySpace - the single most irritating website I've ever seen in my life. Slows my PC to a crawl, hangs from time to time requiring a reboot, and every user's homepage I've ever seen on there is invariably horribly, insanely, impossible to read, with music and/or videos that start up instantly whether you want them to or not. It's like walking into a drunken frat house party. Screw that noise.
Social networking tools make a basic assumption - that I want to network socially. I don't. Or to be more precise, I want to do it when I want to do it. Passive systems work best for my needs, like discussion forums.
I don't want to know what my friends are doing right now, don't want to share with them what I'm doing.
I also don't have a home phone. I'm just not into 'being available' on other people's schedules. My cell phone lets me make and receive phone calls. That's all. And that's all I want it to do. No camera, no web-browsing, no texting, no three-way all singing, all-dancing Java-based crapola, no embedded games, nada, zippo, zilch. When it rings, it goes...'ring'. You know, like a phone.
I've got this interactive experience that is WAY better than all that junk. It's called 'reality'. I didn't invent it, it was here when I got here. It's on all the time. The rendering is amazing, no bottlenecks, no slowdowns, and if it crashes, you won't even care.
I'm Generation Jones. We Jonesers are into technology, we're not Baby Boomers, but we're also not Gen Xers (and beyond). We 'get it', we just don't like it.
If Twitter vanished from the face of the earth tomorrow, not only would it not bother me, I would not notice.
I have no Facebook account. I get lots of email from people I know, trying to get me to sign up. No way. My nieces talked me into signing up on MySpace - the single most irritating website I've ever seen in my life. Slows my PC to a crawl, hangs from time to time requiring a reboot, and every user's homepage I've ever seen on there is invariably horribly, insanely, impossible to read, with music and/or videos that start up instantly whether you want them to or not. It's like walking into a drunken frat house party. Screw that noise.
Social networking tools make a basic assumption - that I want to network socially. I don't. Or to be more precise, I want to do it when I want to do it. Passive systems work best for my needs, like discussion forums.
I don't want to know what my friends are doing right now, don't want to share with them what I'm doing.
I also don't have a home phone. I'm just not into 'being available' on other people's schedules. My cell phone lets me make and receive phone calls. That's all. And that's all I want it to do. No camera, no web-browsing, no texting, no three-way all singing, all-dancing Java-based crapola, no embedded games, nada, zippo, zilch. When it rings, it goes...'ring'. You know, like a phone.
I've got this interactive experience that is WAY better than all that junk. It's called 'reality'. I didn't invent it, it was here when I got here. It's on all the time. The rendering is amazing, no bottlenecks, no slowdowns, and if it crashes, you won't even care.
I'm Generation Jones. We Jonesers are into technology, we're not Baby Boomers, but we're also not Gen Xers (and beyond). We 'get it', we just don't like it.
If Twitter vanished from the face of the earth tomorrow, not only would it not bother me, I would not notice.
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skeletron
Member
So, anyway... Back to the intent of my original thread before it vanished: anyone here know of any interesting photographers on Twitter? I've found a few local art groups, none of which are directly related to photography or even update all that often.
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