Tweetering on the Brink of Blink

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 Teetering, actually. And I’m not sure I want to take the plunge.

 I admit it. I’m a dinosaur, chronologically speaking. I’ve been working two-thirds of my life (that’s 231 in dog years). I worked in a newsroom with manual typewriters, glue pots and three-layer copy paper.  The fax was the size of a washing machine. The walls were yellowed by smoke. When PCs and desktop publishing terminals started their march to domination, the cursor leisurely blinked white against a green (cool) or amber (very cool) background. Every chunk of type had to have a string of code ahead of it to make it print in the desired font, point size, picas and leading. Inserting a drop cap took almost as much code as sending a man to the moon.

But while we didn’t have the benefits of all the modern technological accoutrements, we did have the luxury of time. Time to think. Time to speak. Time to discuss, argue and cajole.  Time to round up and sound out peers and management on what to do and how to do it. Time wasn’t limitless, since the paper still needed to get out every day. But there wasn’t the aching gnaw in your stomach about how to respond to an email or a post or a tweet in a nanosecond.  It wasn’t necessarily better or worse but it was a less frenzied pace than we work in today. Business was done in 24 hour cycles or longer, even PR. Lots of it was done by mail. Sometimes by fax. People still went out for a walk at lunch, and not just to the deli and back.

 Hyperactivity wasn’t invented with the Internet. It just manifests itself differently.

 Don’t get me wrong, I don’t miss that pace. I actually love the sense of danger and adrenaline rush in meeting a deadline and coming up with the right words. I will always be a newsman at heart and I’m over the moon that the news cycles in a nanosecond.

 Twitter is brilliant for making us insiders. Breaking news. Sports scores. Current events. Sorrows and joys. Thrills and spills. On your PC, on your phone.

 But, truth be told, I don’t feel like Twitter is my ideal tableaux. Ditto the blogosphere. Granted these new mediums make perfect sense from a communications perspective but I also find them a bit too showy. A bit too vain and self important. Reading about a Tweeter’s ponderous thoughts more often than not induces nausea.

 What’s worse is the blather and junk that some people post. It’s not clever. It doesn’t make them seem smarter or more with it. It just cements the impression that these people are first and foremost chowder heads that never left the scatological snickering of their adolescence behind.

 So, as it’s my nap time, I should probably explain why I’ve chosen to ramble and rumble.

 I know it’s a new day. I know Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, etc., are here to stay/evolve ad infinitum. That’s a good thing – when used to benefit business and mankind – very much like the atom. I applaud the do-gooders. But in the wrong hands (and thumbs) you hold the potential to destroy the world. At least the world I want to work in.    

~ Excelsior.