>From Slate.com: What Are You Doing? The allure of Twitter, the latest Web sensation
Twitter is the newest assault on your attention span. Once you've signed in, the Twitter site immediately prompts you with a question in bold type: "What are you doing?" Below, there's a blinking cursor and a blank white space where you have 140 characters with which to answer. That's basically it.... Most tweets [Twitter messages] are viewable by all. They join a stream of tweets from around the globeĀa ticker tape of quotidian detail. The tweets you write are also sent to designated friends via text message, e-mail, or instant message. Finally, strangers can elect to "follow" you and receive your updates.... The Twitter downsides are also obvious. Prufrock mourned how he had measured out his life in coffee spoons, and Twitter can be nothing more than an hourly confirmation of our pointless daily round. And, as a friend explained, there is a Heisenberg Uncertainty problem with the site. The correct answer to "What are you doing now?" is always "Typing something into Twitter." But I suspect that it's the open-ended charisma of that question that is propelling the Twitter phenomenon. Life is filled with distraction, and here is this simple Web site asking us to stop and think: "What are you doing?" It's micro-therapy, 14 times a day. Or a new kind of Zen koan. Is it possible to twitter yourself to enlightenment? Twitter is asking us to pay attention, to account for our time, and even to gather a sense of our purpose and usefulness in this world. Or, maybe not. Maybe everyone sounds profound at 140 characters. http://tinyurl.com/2lbzez See tweets from all over the world, in real time: http://twittervision.com/
