All of “Community”

Way back in May 2007 I was checking out Twitter, just to see what the buzz was about. I signed up for an account, made a few tweets, it seemed fun. We had recently moved to New York, life was pretty exciting and the Twitter matched my mood. After a few weeks of happily twittering I did pause to ask why I bother. The entire enterprise seems a tad narcissistic and at that point few of my friends online were connected with me.

About that time my wife came home from a trip to Hiroshima with a little notebook her great grandfather had filled out during his stay in the northwestern United States. It wasn’t much of a journal, mostly an accounting of expenses, or important numbers and dates. You probably see where I’m going with this analogy. She had a micro-journal from her uncle similar in form to the micro-journalling Twiiter affords. Terse handwritten lines told us which ship he took across the Pacific, the hotel he stayed at his first night here, where he lived, the lumber company he worked for, the money he contributed to the Buddhist Temple and the amount he payed to the midwife who delivered his daughter. In short it covered his entire life here, most of which was totally unknown to his family in Japan.

It’s not an exact parallel, but tools like Twitter do make it easy to collect, search and archive notes in various formats. To me making something easier is kind of important. I’m not so egotistical as to think my 140 character riffs will have any historical importance, but some people who will go on to change the world in interesting and important ways are “wasting” their time on Twitter right now. It will fascinating material for historians in the future.