said the two to their twitter tutor

A tutor who tweeted tried to tutor two others to tweet. Said the two to their tutor: "Is it harder to tweet or to tutor two to twitter?"

One of my brothers used to joke that my laptop was like an umbilical cord to the world. That was probably at the height of my flickr addiction (which hasn't really waned that much)and also when I was living in the north and didn't have too many people around that I cared to socialize with regularly. I was very conscious of the amount of time I spent online, but it was valuable time. I learned so much about photography from the people that I interacted with online (most indirectly) and I used my online interactions as a way to extend into the real world. Between flickr, facebook, ravelry, RSS, various blogs that I half-heartedly post to, my online world is pretty rich and time consuming. Recently I set up a twitter account (for the second time since I set one up a long time ago and then deleted it instantly when I decided that I didn't want to make the time for it). I feel a bit lacklustre about my decision to tweet. I'm really only doing it to observe what else goes on. Twitter has seen a real boom recently and everyone and their dog seems to be posting status updates. It depresses me a little bit that this whole micro-blogging phenomenon has taken off the way it has. It's all about headlines. It's all about parsed down information that we can scan quickly. Why are we so obsessed with speed and succinctness? It must have a lot to do with our desire for instant gratification. When we experience something we want to post about it instantly. We want others to know what is going on as it happens. We want to achieve synchronicity in an asynchronous environment. Twitter has been described as the modern-day telegraph, except we are our own telegraph operators. But I feel at odds with this desire to be everywhere at once. As much as I want to share with others what I am up to, I think it is important to make sure that I am fully experiencing the moment. It is probably best that my cellphone is as cheap as they come and I limit my use of the SMS functions to texting friends. I don't access the internet via cellphone, I don't post photos in real time to flickr, I don't text status updates to facebook or flickr. Although I am fond of all of these tools, I'd rather be spending more time with people in the real world. If they want to know what I'm doing, what I'm thinking, how I'm feeling - well they can turn to face me and ask. Or they can wait until they go back to their computers and see what I've posted to flickr.

I think I will muse more about this subject in the days to come. I'm going to put pen to paper on this one.