What Is This Thing Called Twitter?

I've had a Twitter account for seven or eight months and frankly I've hardly used it because I still don't get it. I'm told that until you've got x followers then no, you don't get it but in reality I have yet to see anything interesting on Twitter that stirs the vaguest interest in my jaded brain. Even Stephen Fry, who's blog I read avidly for its elegant use of language and ideas has failed to maintain my interest in Twitter for more than a couple of tweets and as for Jonathan Ross, well his many daily tweets are rapidly causing me to re-evaluate him. Twitter is, I believe, the digital equivalent of the Kings New Suit of Clothes and those that are twittering are desperately trying to justify the time investment by professing a relevance that just doesn't pertain. I'll persist for now but I'm waiting expectantly for some shining moment of revelation.

To Twitter or Not To Twitter?

I've been a moderate Twitter user since Twitter first poked its beak over the parapet but, to be frank, I just don't really get the whole Twitter thing. Shorts tweets of peoples mundane random thoughts are just annoying and why the inane ramblings of millions of vacant brains, mine included, should be clogging up bandwidth is anyones guess. Anyway, I'm luke warm on the idea from the get go but then I learn that the Ross/Brand axis is twittering away good-oh and the whole idea begins to look like the chattering classes are beginning to invade every space I once thought I was safe in. It's as though every vertical surface of every city on the planet has been fly-posted with the dreary banalities of even drearier celebs. There's no escape except to vacate the twittesphere forthwith. I've already been driven from Radio 2 by this desperate duo I need a good reason not to be exiled from Twitter and thankfully here it comes in the unexpected form of Stephen Fry who, it would seem, is a Twitter user of some stature if his followers figures are to be believed. 

I still don't get Twitter but I'll give it one more chance because of Mr Fry. 

Lucky Twitter.

Sam Pepys for the Geek Generation

I will be the first to admit that since his appearance in QI on telly, my view of Mr Fry has been somewhat jaundiced. QI always seemed to me to be just a vehicle for Fry to appear to demonstrate his enormous intellect and personally I found the format indescribably tiresome. Having been a huge fan of his work in his Fry & Laurie and Blackadder days I was sad to turn my face from Stephen but hey, it's only television. What the hell there more enjoyable tripe on other channels. 

Imagine my surprise then, to discover not only his excellent series on America in which he travelled round that enormous continent in a London Black Cab exploring in words and pictures some of America's more arcane crevices, but also that he is a gadget Geek of the most informed and intelligent kind. 

The American show was a delight made all the more so by Stephen Fry's self-deprecating erudition and his abstention from the all-too-easy descent into mockery that parts of American culture seems to invite. The series was an exploration of a diverse country with huge amounts of admirable qualities almost childlike in their enthusiasm. It would have been simple to mock their excesses with a soi-distant British intellectual cynicism and Stephen, to his immense credit, resisted the temptation.

Next I come across this. One of the most sensible, accurate and balanced articles I've read about the smartphone revolution. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the technological evolution and it's effect on society.