All I really know so far is what Motomynd told me:
The bright point about twitter is that if someone has nothing important to say you spend less time figuring that out.I'm not sure whether that's a full-fledged endorsement or not.
Of course, I am aware that "tweets" are limited to 140 characters. The Twitter website claims that
You can discover a lot in a little space. You can see photos, videos and conversations directly in Tweets to get the whole story at a glance, and all in one place.Well, if the 140 characters can accommodate a photo, that's an extra 1,000 whole words right there.
I don't know how many words a video is reputed to be worth—but probably not as many as 1,000 times the number of still images comprising it...I suppose, though, that it could actually be worth more than that many words, on the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts?
Plus, videos can include voice and music....It's actually starting to sound as though a tweet might be like what Elton John said about sad songs.
What do you think about Twitter? Especially if you actually use it or have tried it.
You may, as usual, record your tweets in a comment below.
Or your sad songs (especially if you sing them yourself and upload them to YouTube)*.
I appreciate it.
_______________
* You can't include images or sounds in a Blogger comment, but you can include a link to them. The code for making a word or phrase a hyperlink is as follows:
<a href="url">word or phrase</a>
my 12yo stpdtr tls me twttr is evn bttr thn txt 4 ppl who r jst 2 bsy 2 bthr w hole wrds. lk ukr?
ReplyDeleteTell you stepdaughter that I'm sorry but I'm going to have to forget about Twitter. My wife says that if I join Twitter she will ring my neck, I already waste 90% of my life on electronic nonsense.
Deleteikr
ReplyDeleteThanks for...caring? (I interpreted "lk ukr?" as, "Like you care?" Then, by extension, "ikr" equals "I care"?) Otherwise I'm baffled.
Deleteikr = I know, right. As in "I understand your wife's perspective."
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the risk from your wife, do you really want to be out there in a realm where you are constantly being hustled by 12-year-old kids?
lk ukr = Like you know, right?
2:28:00 reply with typo corrected
DeleteThanks for the glosses! If "the risk from my wife" weren't impetus enough to drop all thought of joining Twitter (it is enough), then the thought of "constantly being hustled by 12-year-old kids" would do the trick. But if that didn't do the trick after all, then the need to master the encoding certainly would!
lmao
ReplyDelete"I [you] may also out"? "I like mayonnaise"? "I'm mayonnaise in the hands of my stepdaughter"? "I'm a Maoist"? "I'm A-OK"? "I pressed Enter too soon"?
Deletelaughing my a** off
ReplyDeleteMaybe you really should stay away from matching wits with the preteens, to say nothing of the teens, because you might find it p2c2e (a process too complicated to explain).
On the bright side, with all the abbreviations, texting and tweeting, we no longer have to listen to them constantly say "whatever" and start every sentence with "like." As in, like, you know, right?
Oh, right, most letters aren't capitalized; that's a lowercase letter ell (for "laughing"). The font Moristotle's comments are rendered in doesn't distinguish between an uppercase letter eye and a lowercase letter ell either. If I had guessed that "l" was an ell, I like to think I might have figured "lmao" out.
DeleteYou really think that that sort of abbreviation is a product of wit? Do these kids actually communicate, do you think?
Motomynd replied by email Tuesday evening because he had too long a comment for a single comment box. I've segmented the reply in what I hope will be a reasonable manner:
DeleteI don't know if the abbreviation is a product of wit, or maybe just of individual, intelligent, practical, and logical thinking. After all, why waste a lot of words saying something if you can say it in three letters? Yes, these kids actually communicate very well, with each other and with anyone who makes the effort to pick up the jargon.
It is not unlike learning a down-and-dirty modern street version of Spanish, for example, instead of going to college to learn the formal way it was spoken 50 years ago. It comes down to priorities: Are decorum and flowery words most important, or quick and effective communication? Do you want to learn how to talk with your new neighbor from Chiapas, or would your rather know how to talk to his father, who will never leave Mexico and who you will never meet, or his grandfather, who has been dead for 20 years?
This abbreviation process may just be the next step in the natural evolution of language. Look back 100 years, or 200, or 300, at some of the many-lettered words and long-winded phrases that were used to make simple points we now say in two or three short words. If a modern American went by time travel back to medieval England, he or she would probably be burned at the stake before finishing their third sentence. And yet, that modern speech is fully accepted here today from Harvard to just about any backyard. Is the explosion in the use of abbreviations in texting and tweeting, and ultimately in speech, a quantum leap that usually takes decades or centuries? And will it lead to a sort of uni-code form of communication, so we don't have to learn multiple languages?
What is the real point of language complexity? Is it really to communicate more clearly, or to enable the more formally educated to feel superior to the less schooled? And to enable the more educated to exploit the less schooled? There are many highly educated lawyers who have become national-level politicians: How often can anyone outside the Washington, DC zip code figure out what they are really saying? If the real point of the complexity in language is to communicate clearly, then why do most of Karl Rove's candidates win elections with six-word buzz phrases that just about any parrot could master?
Motomynd continued, expressing a pet peeve of his:
DeleteSince I have already more than overrun the space it should have taken to address your two short questions, let me address a pet peeve: Shakespeare. Some of us never could, still don't and never will be able to stand Shakespeare. Talk about language complexity for the sake of complexity, was there really any other point? Yes, somewhere along the way the more highly educated deemed Shakespeare important, or worthy, or maybe just the equivalent of hip before there were hipsters, but was he really anything more than the master of the soap opera before the time of television?
Let's ponder a line from Shakespeare: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." And another: "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red."
That, seriously, is the most acclaimed writing from the era? I have an image of old Will laughing all the way to the bank much the same as the guy who came up with the line "Show me the money!" in that campy Tom Cruise "Jerry Maguire" movie. Is Shakespeare, or old Tom Cruise movies, for that matter, worth school kids investing their time in today? Really?
The reason I bring up the point is I was skimming Yahoo over the weekend and noted, "Wow! Tom Cruise and his wife are divorcing." To which my very sharp, very well informed, 12-year-old stepdaughter said, "Who is Tom Cruise?" I tried to explain: Mission Impossible, Top Gun, biggest star of our time...yadda, yadda, yadda. To which she replied, "Never heard of him, or the movies. He's divorcing? Who cares? Maybe I'm sorry for his wife. Or maybe not. Don't know."
And with that she was gone, back to her on-line pretend fashion designing, leaving me to ponder: Who does care about Tom Cruise? And why?
Make a 12-year-old child sit through "Jerry Maguire," or make me sit through "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and we might get into a long discussion where the one thing we agree on is "But, for my own part, it was Greek to me."
Or we might just text "waste. lmao" and talk about something important.
Motomynd, thanks for taking the time to express your contrarian views. I never suspected that you didn't share my love for Shakespeare, and now I know that you don't.
DeleteMy forty volumes of "The Yale Shakespeare" (one play per volume, plus a biography, his sonnets, and a collection of his other poems) are among the relatively few books I haven't sold or donated to libraries over the past few years, as I "downsized" my personal possessions.
Do you mean to suggest that I may be making much ado about nothing? Or mean simply that avoiding Shakespeare is as you like it?
[Comment copied from Facebook]
ReplyDeleteI have no reason to join Twitter, but I can think of one for you. Tweeting is sometimes called "microblogging." You can enter the germ of an idea in a tweet, say that you've expanded on it in Moristotle, and give a link. Try it for a week or two and see what it does to your blog readership.
Ken, thanks for copying the Facebook comment to Morisotle. Before I conduct the suggested experiment, I need to re-evaluate my reasons or motives for expanding readership.
DeleteI struggled for several minutes to say something more than what the first paragraph manages, but the incoherence that struggled to appear in the little comment box served only to emphasize the urgency of the said re-evaluation.
Ken, great idea! Your many postings on Moristotle show that you obviously have a knack for PR, so do you by any chance know of open directories, sort of online "phone books" for lack of a better term, for publicizing new Twitter accounts, blogs and forums?
ReplyDeleteMoto, you can google "blog directory" and "twitter directory" and peruse the pickings. There are even directories for directories, like directorylist.com. The ultimate directory, in a manner of speaking, is Google itself.
ReplyDeleteMoristotle, have you ever tried to read Shakespeare objectively, or do you approach his writing as you were most likely trained to do, with the sort of hushed reverence one is told to project upon entering a golden-domed temple? Shakespeare, the church, political parties, college football even, all are steeped in tradition, and their supporters employ much pomp and circumstance to maintain their perceived greatness.
ReplyDeleteIf you slice through the veneer, however, how great are they? We are all painfully aware of corruption in the church, politics and college football, yet all have their ardent supporters. It has come to light that church leaders saw it as more important to protect the image of the church than to protect children who were being abused, and now it seems that officials at Penn State made a similar call. And from what I read, we don't even know for sure that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, for goodness sake. So why are any of them deserving of blind adulation?
If you, and others, truly get that much enjoyment from actually reading Shakespeare, whoever he or she was, good for you! For the rest of us, yes, it is much ado over nothing. We see only a long-winded writer who takes forever to make a point, if indeed the point is ever made. We see the pomp and circumstance and we are as skeptical of its merit as we are of deceitful old men hiding beneath flowing red robes in Europe, or black robes in this country.
To bring this back to "tweeting" and the art of brevity, which, yes, I need to start practicing: if the young today can quickly and effectively communicate with a few letters rather than a lot of words, hopefully they will come to value what is said over how it is said, and they will likewise come to value the reality of a situation over its pomp and circumstance.
Motomynd, I think the real issue here is that Shakespeare (that is, the work) is an acquired taste, a "learned" taste if you prefer, perhaps not unlike an appreciation for a fine single-malt scotch, a robust dark beer, or a fine motorcycle.
DeleteAdulation has nothing to do with it. The text speaks, man! The verse sings!
Of course pre-teens aren't going to have heard of Shakespeare unless they happen to live in a home where Shakespeare is appreciated and discussed (perhaps quoted or read aloud), or happen perhaps to have accompanied their parents (or a kindly aunt) to a performance.
To compare Shakespeare (either the man or his work) to the church or to political parties seems wrong-headed to me. Maybe I fail to understand you there.
True, some people make much ado about Shakespeare. And so do others about fine beverage or vehicle.
And some of the ado about Shakespeare is negative, such as yours, I think.
To paraphrase Tuesday's post, the world is unavoidable, even if parts of it are not as we like it.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteKen, about your removed comment...you have such a brilliant wit I often don't know when to take you seriously. As long as you don't start besmirching Da Vinci, many people will agree with the tone of your mysteriously expunged post and may have names to add to it. Just don't mess with Da Vinci. He was "da man" and compared to him most are mere pretenders.
ReplyDeleteMoristotle, before I address your reply above, please allow me to remind you of an email exchange we had about issues of legalities with blog postings. Ken's posting may be removed but it lives forever in the blogosphere. Good luck with the libel fallout from that one! I understand the protectors of Mozart's street cred in particular are a testy lot.
Now, as for your post above. For many of us, most people who swoon over Shakespeare, (present company excepted, of course) have a noteworthy level of pretentiousness about them and are generally more concerned with how things look rather than how things are. Pomp and circumstance types, in other words. These are not people who choose a single-malt Scotch because they like it. They are the type who choose a wine because they know it is pricey and praised by their friends and associates. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9849949-39.html) Thus the connection to those who choose to be caught up in the trappings of the church, political parties, and our own Supreme Court, rather then peering through the facade to the deception of the people lurking beneath.
Speaking of pomp and circumstance, have you heard the rousing new anthem approved by the new young leader of North Korea. And have you seen the accompanying video with missiles firing, fists pumping, and so on? Let pomp and circumstance hold sway and North Korea is what you get.
"Let every eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch
Against whose charms faith melteth in blood."
To paraphrase the Bard and the clumsy utterance he pinned on poor Claudio:
"Let every eye see the truth. Do not be fooled by the trappings that disguise the deception lurking beneath."
Enjoy your weekend. I'm off to have a shot of cheap, McClelland's Islay Scotch, which gives me extreme pleasure because it tastes almost exactly like my favorite vintage Laphraoig single malt yet costs barely one-third the price.
Why, Motomynd, you whoreson dog (as a number of Shakespeare's characters addessed other characters), you pretend to be a philistine when it comes to Shakespeare, yet you can quote him and work the quotations into your own message better than I can! And I commend you for it and for many other things, including your taste in scotch and the recommendation of McClelland's Islay.
DeleteMoristotle, to create drama, someone has to be the villain, or at least the curmudgeon. Since Ken has been in a too-good mood, someone has to pick up the slack.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I do find Shakespeare tedious and uninspiring, replete with minimal soap-opera-quality plot lines made grandiose more so by reputation and the language of the era, than by the actual quality of the writing. By its trappings, in other words. Much like the grand buildings, mystique, and red robes of the church and black robes of the court inspire people to give more weight than is deserved to the words of prejudiced old men with secret agendas.
And I still see great potential in a youthful culture that seeks to communicate quickly and efficiently by Twitter and text rather than in long-winded wordiness. More knowledge shared more quickly means a better chance of seeing through the murk into the light beyond.