Thursday, April 9, 2009

Twitterpated

Shannon Mendenhall
DTC 375 - Dr. Farman
04/09/2009
Word Count: 937

Twitterpated
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin wrote that, “No medium, it seems, can now function independently and establish its own separate and purified space of cultural meaning” (Bolter and Grusin). Forms of communication that utilize electronic textuality are all seemingly remediated from older forms of communication. Individuals who utilize cyberspace for both communication and expression find that different forms of social networks and blogs have become the primary applications utilized. One such application, Twitter, is a microblog that simply asks “What are you doing?” which has interestingly enough had a large impact on societal communications. Twitter is not just another example of remediation at its finest, though it is remediation, this application has shaped electronic textuality by creating what some are calling “ambient intimacy” or a “social sixth sense.”

In the aspect of remediation Twitter is unique because it is remediated from a combination of previous forms of communication. Twitter is similar to many social networking websites such as Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook in that it enables individuals to connect with one another through cyberspace. Twitter is also remediated from blogging because like blogs, Twitter enables its members to publicize personal entries within cyberspace. Micro-blogging remediated from blogging, and thus, Twitter and other micro-blogging applications were created. Many social networks also utilize an aspect of micro-blogging with their available ‘status update’ type features, but these networks are not dependent on status updated to function while Twitter is. Twitter is also remediated from text-messages. Many individuals utilize mass text-messaging to dispatch messages to multiple friends at once. Twitter simplifies that process, and Twitter as an application is best utilized through text-messaging. It is obvious that Twitter is remediated, as Bolter and Grusin suggest.

So what makes Twitter different? Clive Thompson compares the Twitter experience to a “telepathic awareness” of the individuals whom he is connected to (Thompson, Clive). Thompson argues that social proprioception is created through the use of this application. Individuals are aware of one another as a body; an understanding is created through the available knowledge of the actions and feelings of those whom you are ‘following’. This new “sixth sense” extends our physical bodies into the lives of others. Through Twitter individuals have the capability to know what is going on in other locations at the same time they are experiencing life in their current location. Their bodies are extended to the locations of the bodies of those that they are connected to, enabling them to inhabit spaces that they are not physically present within. Visual images of actions and occurrences may present themselves if the recipients of the tweet are familiar with the location and the personality of the individual who authored it. Because of this phenomenon Twitter has the ability to strengthen relationships.

Leisa Reichelt coined the term “ambient intimacy” when reflecting on Twitter (Reichelt). Ambient intimacy is the ability for people to intimately stay in touch with one another with regularity. We find ambient intimacy unlikely in our society because of time constraints and the limits that location places upon us. Both Thompson and Reichelt comment on how Twitter and similar applications allow users to focus on meaningful subjects once they are able to communicate face-to-face. Ultimately this saves these individuals time because the ‘small talk’ that society is accustomed to has become obsolete. Topics that are meaningful and purposeful can rightfully be restored as the platform of face-to-face communication. In another article on ambience, Clive Thompson talks about how Twitter allows for face-to-face conversations to pick up in the middle (Thompson, Brave). He calls the phenomenon and ambient communication “co-presence”. When you meet up with your friends it is as though you were never apart. Many critics laugh at this idea, and Twitter has been scorned for glorifying meaningless personal statements, but Thompson put things into perspective by saying, “Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.”

Twitter also has an edge over e-mailing and blogging. As Thompson notes, e-mail messages are typically individualistically targeted (Thompson, Brave). Their intention is usually to communicate a topical (and usually lengthy) message to a specific person. They are time consuming because they are personal and require a response. Thompson points out that tweets can be skimmed like newspaper headlines, you can even skip some, reducing the amount of time you spend communicating textually. Twitter is an awareness tool that can relay similar personal messages, but responses are not necessary with this application. Some of the disadvantages of e-mails are also shared with blogs. Reading all of the entries of a particular individual on a blog is very time consuming, and following the entries of multiple people would be extremely difficult. Twitter engages individuals in a synopsis of the activities of multiple persons in a very small amount of time.

The discovery of the social sixth sense that Twitter has introduced has caused use to expand. Twitter has drawn in many users, and is one of the fastest growing social networking tools. It is popular because it is different. Though it is remediated from past media, Twitters strength is ambient intimacy. This application is enveloped in ambient intimacy in a way unlike the applications that came before it. Individuals appear to have love affairs with this application because of its uniqueness and availableness. Twitter has changed the way that people communicate, and has brought them closer to one another through a common knowledge of ideas and activities.


Works Cited

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. 53-62.

Reichelt, Leisa. "Ambient Intimacy" Disambiguity. 1 Mar. 2007. TypeBased. 9 Apr. 2009 .

Thompson, Clive. "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy." The New York Times 7 Sep. 2008.

Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense." Wired Magazine. 26 June 2007.

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