Young Me

Video Killed the Radio Star

43.  I type in the Dvorak keyboard. I taught myself how a few months ago and haven’t looked back (or down) since.

But let’s rewind:

  • Talking killed the grunting star
  • Writing killed the talking star
  • Printing press killed the meticulous monk painstakingly transcribing the bible star
  • Newspaper killed the pamphlet star
  • Telephone killed the fine art of letter writing star
  • The radio killed the conversation star
  • Video killed the radio star is a good song, I sort of want to listen to it now.
  • Magazines killed the newspaper star
  • The Internet killed the Media Conglomerate star
  • E-mail killed the writing star
  • Cell phones killed the home phone star
  • Text messaging simultaneously killed the e-mailing and cell phone star
  • Social networking killed the networking star
  • And finally:  Twitter killed everything.

Twitter takes social networking and strips out both the ‘social’ and ‘networking’ parts.  It’s the McDonald’s drive-thru of self-expression and communication.  With twitter you can update the world and your friends without having to think about it.

This is not to say that I don’t like Twitter.  I think of it as both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable.  Some of the people I follow are interesting, some are hilarious, and some are services or organizations of some sort.  Some people attempt to make Twitter games and some play along.  Some people (myself included) attempt to make Twitter the constrained writing equivalent of a work of art.  We look at it as a minimalist form of Web 2.0.

But all of these together make me afraid of what will come next.  Will the next wave be a Web site you can update by thought?  Will it be a Web site that only allows from a selection of whimsical emoticons and mishmashed labels?  Or will it be something else entirely?

43.  I type in the Dvorak keyboard. I taught myself how a few months ago and haven’t looked back (or down) since. But let’s rewind: Talking killed the grunting star Writing killed the talking star Printing press killed the meticulous monk painstakingly transcribing the bible star Newspaper killed the pamphlet star Telephone killed the fine…

Comments

  1. Oh, great. I now have that song going through my head; it will be stuck there all freaking day until something even worse comes along to replace it. Thanks, so much.
    🙂