Was Overheard | Twitter's Gossip Rag. The Internet Entrepreneur » OpenIdea: TwitterMail.com. Purposive Drift: A Space Without A Goal. A Space Without A Goal On Sunday I did a very ordinary, everyday, thing, I went to lunch with Johnnie, Chris, Kevin and Tania, in Johnnie's local pub in Islington. I had a great time. So good in fact that instead of leaving at three, to give me time to prepare and cook a meal for my family and a friend, the first time I looked at my watch it was already past five. So what's the big deal you might ask - I don't often, if ever, write about my social life here. This is not that kind of blog. Well, there were some curious things about this lunch. I didn't know Johnnie, Chris, Kevin and Tania.
I don't know anybody who knows Johnnie, Chris, Kevin and Tania. We weren't meeting on business or because we had been thrown together by an event. So far as I could tell the only two people, who actually knew each other were Kevin and Tania, who I think were husband and wife. So I guess we met as a group of strangers because we were interested and curious. So, somehow, we were all just there. Johnnie Moore's Weblog: Missing the point of twitter. When people look at Twitter and say, “What’s the point?” , it might be better not to answer them.
It strikes me that, “What’s the point?” Is often what depressed people ask of life itself. I think it’s a statement dressed up as a question; the statement might be “I feel miserable”. So many narratives of organisational life seem to start from an assumption about things having to have goals. Rambling on here, the other thing about points is that they are sharp and focussed.
Return of Fora? Is Twitter TOO good? « Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video... | Main | Seven Blog Virtues (for a Global Microbrand) » Is Twitter TOO good? Twitter scares me. For all its popularity, I see at least three issues: 1) it's a near-perfect example of the psychological principle of intermittent variable reward, the key addictive element of slot machines. 2) The strong "feeling of connectedness" Twitterers get can trick the brain into thinking its having a meaningful social interaction, while another (ancient) part of the brain "knows" something crucial to human survival is missing. 3) Twitter is yet another--potentially more dramatic--contribution to the problems of always-on multi-tasking... you can't be Twittering (or emailing or chatting, of course) and simultaneously be in deep thought and/or a flow state. [Disclaimer: I'm SO in the minority on this one... it looks like about a hundred-to-one in favor of Twitter, so I'm most likely way wrong on this one (but it doesn't stop me from trying).
Dr.