My little corner of the Great Big Internet
After my initial scorn of friends who were early converts to Twitter I started using it, and wouldn't you know it, I actually enjoy doing so. In an earlier blog post I've written about my Twitter awakening so I won't repeat it here.
In my early days of using Twitter I was very precious about who I was following, but I've relaxed a bit now, and as a result I read tweets written by a variety of people. And poor souls, they suffer through mine!
Last month I watched more than my normal dose of soccer while the World Cup was being played in South Africa. An added dimension to it was keeping an eye on the Twitter #wc2010 stream while watching the game. As the game was broadcast live it was in sync with the Twitter feed. A disadvantage of living in Adelaide when most of Australia's television shows come out of Sydney or Melbourne is that we are normally on a 30 minute delay here from the east coast. So when popularly Tweeted shows like ABC TV's 'Lateline', or 'Q and A' are showing in Adelaide on the tv the related tweets are half an hour ahead of what we are seeing. It can be a great way to spoil a surprise, or it can also be a great way to look like one has ESP and impress the kids by forecasting what is about to occur on the telly.
Sometimes despite the 30 minute head start I'll throw-in a tweet or two about something I find interesting on one of those shows, knowing that someone in the eastern states might think we are a bit slow in the head here and can't process information very quickly. But we're not as slow as those folks in Western Australia! They are WAY behind us! (Haha and love to all my WA friends.)
While watching the World Cup and following the Twitter stream of #wc2010 I saw lots of different Twitter users from around the world, tweeting in their native languages. It was like being in a global village as so many different nationalities were simultaneously tweeting about the same action occurring on the soccer field.
But last week I realised that the people I normally interact with through Twitter are very much like me, (with some exceptions) generally white, middle-aged, middle-class, and mainly living in Adelaide. The Internet is global, but my world is local.
Then this week I was watching a TEDTalks video by Ethan Zuckerman 'Listening to global voices' where he discusses that very same situation: a global internet but how our involvement is generally on a local basis. It was interesting to hear him say that Nicholas Negroponte's 'Bits vs Atoms' concept may not be correct. He used the example of being able to easily buy bottles of Fiji Water (atoms) in the United States, but not being able to easily find news about Fiji (bits.)
It seems that despite the promise of the global internet and all that it brings, maybe we very much live in our own neighborhood. In real life, and in the virtual world.
I'm going to watch Zuckerman's TEDTalk again and may write more later.
In my early days of using Twitter I was very precious about who I was following, but I've relaxed a bit now, and as a result I read tweets written by a variety of people. And poor souls, they suffer through mine!
Last month I watched more than my normal dose of soccer while the World Cup was being played in South Africa. An added dimension to it was keeping an eye on the Twitter #wc2010 stream while watching the game. As the game was broadcast live it was in sync with the Twitter feed. A disadvantage of living in Adelaide when most of Australia's television shows come out of Sydney or Melbourne is that we are normally on a 30 minute delay here from the east coast. So when popularly Tweeted shows like ABC TV's 'Lateline', or 'Q and A' are showing in Adelaide on the tv the related tweets are half an hour ahead of what we are seeing. It can be a great way to spoil a surprise, or it can also be a great way to look like one has ESP and impress the kids by forecasting what is about to occur on the telly.
Sometimes despite the 30 minute head start I'll throw-in a tweet or two about something I find interesting on one of those shows, knowing that someone in the eastern states might think we are a bit slow in the head here and can't process information very quickly. But we're not as slow as those folks in Western Australia! They are WAY behind us! (Haha and love to all my WA friends.)
While watching the World Cup and following the Twitter stream of #wc2010 I saw lots of different Twitter users from around the world, tweeting in their native languages. It was like being in a global village as so many different nationalities were simultaneously tweeting about the same action occurring on the soccer field.
But last week I realised that the people I normally interact with through Twitter are very much like me, (with some exceptions) generally white, middle-aged, middle-class, and mainly living in Adelaide. The Internet is global, but my world is local.
Then this week I was watching a TEDTalks video by Ethan Zuckerman 'Listening to global voices' where he discusses that very same situation: a global internet but how our involvement is generally on a local basis. It was interesting to hear him say that Nicholas Negroponte's 'Bits vs Atoms' concept may not be correct. He used the example of being able to easily buy bottles of Fiji Water (atoms) in the United States, but not being able to easily find news about Fiji (bits.)
It seems that despite the promise of the global internet and all that it brings, maybe we very much live in our own neighborhood. In real life, and in the virtual world.
I'm going to watch Zuckerman's TEDTalk again and may write more later.
posted by Rick's Rambles at 10:56 pm
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