…Microblogging Is Dumbing Us Down
1. It’s so easy. 140 characters max. You can SMS from your phone. Or contribute through your browser. It’s quick. But the reality is that short messaging and rapid communication has to have affected our ability to write well. Grammar sucks because you only have a limited number of characters, so short-forms, acronyms and emoticons have replaced well thought out prose. And many people seem to have lost their passion for the written word and dedicate little time to it. But it doesn’t have to be this way, as The Spin Stops Here offers, “Writing can be a lifelong pursuit and a real source of enjoyment. Finding the perfect words to express your thoughts and convictions is like mastering a painting or a dance - it takes time and effort but the payoff can be incredible.”
2. Proponents of microblogging profer that it is an incredibly efficient tool to disseminate information. Accepted, without argument, when it is used properly! Unfortunately, most content is about inane subject matter. You ate a crepe for breakfast! Wonderful! Some services, like Plurk, go so far as to start your sentences for you, so you don’t even have to write out complete thoughts.
3. Depending on how many microblogs one follows, a lot of time and brainpower can be wasted during the day. Putting aside any arguments about productivity, the consumption of inane chatter takes up time that could be spent reading more valuable information and occupies space in your brain that is already packed (and losing gray matter every day). It’s also interesting that we seem to be happy to read about every tiny facet of someone’s life through 140 characters clips, but get annoyed when we overhear the details of someone life as they talk on the phone or are forced to eavesdrop on people having conversation in a public place. Then again, I guess we don’t have the option of subscribing (or unsubscribing) to a loud talker.
4. Without any empirical evidence for backup, it seems that many people have become reactive thinkers, particularly among the younger set of technophiles that are being brought up on the speed and ease of “contributing to the conversation.” The easier it is to achieve immediacy, the faster it is that we can react and the less thought that goes into our responses. Think back to the days of hand-written letters, and the time and care it took to craft one. The typewriter, and then faxes, made communicating a little faster. But the world changed dramatically with email and microblogging as an environment was created that resulted in little need, or desire, for reflection. Furthermore, In a widely cites article, Nick Carr argues that all of these little chunks of data has reduced our ability to master long, complex arguments.
5. As the Guardian hypothesizes, the vehicles on which we read and write online may be contributing to our dumbing down. Reading on a screen is tiring and takes longer than a similar exercise on paper. Plus, with paper you don’t get sidetracked by embedded links and the notifier that you’ve got mail, which of course you must check immediately!
July 15th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Think of how many microblog posts contain a link to a blog post… here is the answer to your question: NO, micorblogging and blogging coexist.
Best,
Luca
July 15th, 2008 at 9:48 am
y, grmr suks. cnt spk nrml stnces anmr.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Mark,
Some well thought out ideas that have been troubling me.
I’ve been Tweeting for about 6 months now, and although I think I’ve found it more useful and interesting than I ever expected, it does have it’s drawbacks.
To your point #3, I strongly believe that the human brain has a “bandwidth” limit and it can be used efficiently or filled with clutter. For me, it’s a matter of priorities, but in an increasingly IM-infused, microblogging-maddened, and always-on world, such focus and discipline gets harder and harder.
Furthermore, don’t you think that the majority of blogs aren’t as well thought out and handcrafted as the likes of yours? Many are barely more than streams of consciousness.
For me, the new technologies are liberating and have their uses, but it is a matter of filtering faster than the noise increases to keep the signal/noise ratio sufficiently high.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Luca - you’re absolutely right about links contained within microblog posts. As noted in #2, I would consider this proper usage, assuming that the content at the end of the link is useful. Something to consider when one posts or follows another microblogger.
Randall - good thoughts about the effect of new technologies. One thing that I am starting to develop is being very critical of the blogs I read and the microblogs I follow. It is easy to subscribe and/or engage, but it is hard to disengage. I recently took a vacation and had absolutely no online access. Very refreshing! It didn’t take me long to figure out what was a must read, nice to read and needed to be purged. To your comment about the thoughtfulness of most blogs, I’m not sure it would be fair to comment either way. There are both well written and poorly written blogs - you have the power to choose what to read. (Mr. M. List may want to chime in here.)
Sean
July 15th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Randall,
Writing original, insight blog posts can be challenging so often it’s easier and quicker to jump in on the conversation of the day. Here at 4RW and markevanstech.com, I’ve tried to focus on offering different thoughts, even if they’re outside the topic du jour.
That said, different bloggers have different approaches. The bottom line is whether they enjoy doing it, regardless of if people find these blogs useful, interesting or valuable.
Mark
July 15th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I’ve been blogging for business for four years, and Twittering for about four months. Suddenly, my blog has become much more ponderous, onerous and serious for me to contemplate and write.
I don’t blame Twitter as much as I believe I’m training my brain to think very differently because of the 140 character limitation imposed there.
The thing that won’t work for me (or for the few readers I’ve garnered over the years) is a dumbing down of the original thought that moves me to blog in the first place. In the meantime, I do both for myself, and am always amazed when someone reaches out to comment in any way, in either venue.
July 15th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
As a novelist and author with some success, I can see some of your argument, but have to disagree with the rest. Like any toy or tool, micro-blogging is not the same at the beck and call of every keyboard it meets. You don’t have to resort to bad grammar or emoticons…you can in fact use the same sort of eloquence practiced by poets - more delivered in fewer words. You can connect and get assistance with things that otherwise might have taken an hour of time to find on your own…as happened for me today with my WordPress 2.6 upgrade when a Twitter follower gave me the link to an auto-update script.
It’s not the gun that kills people.
It’s not the micro-blog that makes people dumber.
It’s the choice…
DNW
July 16th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Janet - there needs to be more people like you! Like David’s notes in his comment, it takes time and effort to write thoughtfully. Interesting that you say you have to train your brain differently. Do you think that Twitter has “untrained” it a bit or is Twitter making you more conscious of how/what you write?
David - very well put. We just have to stop ourselves from being lazy and start being more thoughtful. One could hypothesize that technology is to fault here, but we’ll leave that to another 4RW.
Sean
July 18th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
[...] lists. As Twitter and other similar services rise in popularity, Mr. List has determined that microblogging is dumbing us down. By forcing our thoughts into the confines of 140 characters (or 160 in the case of SMS), are we [...]
July 21st, 2008 at 3:32 pm
All good points, and something I’ve been wrestling with myself lately. Glen at LifeDev wrote a tip a while ago saying that you can use Twitter as a productivity/accountability tool. For example, if you have a task you need to get done, post a message saying that is what you are working on. This will make you more accountable (especially good for individuals working from home). This seems like a reasonable approach, so going to test it out.