Not a part of Tweet-ory

The Library of Congress is going to archive tweets (the posts on Twitter) for future generations.

I knew it was prudent that I never jumped on that bandwagon.

~

I can barely get people to pay attention to my blahg posts (judging from the site metering I do); I see no need to commence a Twitter feed and see explicitly how few followers I get.

Well, the bigger problem is that I don't tend to think in terms of 140-character chunks, so to participate in "tweeting" would require way more effort to be pithy than I imagine Twitter is supposed to be.

~

I'm avoiding contemplating what historians in the future will make of the combined content of thousands (millions?) of individuals who (I would guess) were not composing their missives with regard to posterity.

Of course, I'm not sure there will be historians in the future. The trend seems to be heading toward less reflection and more immediacy (as evidenced by the aforementioned Twitter) and what one is doing right that moment. University history departments will get few applicants and will cease to be funded. The only purpose the past will serve is for pop culture nostalgia specials on VH1. These archived tweets seem unlikely to become the subject of academic investigation.

If nothing else, given the millions and millions of tweets included, it would turn in to a full-time job to review and analyze them all (or even a significant portion thereof). Who's going to have that kind of time on their hands when everyone will be too busy tweeting about what they're doing?

Thank goodness this post won't be archived in a library.