I first became a fan of Steven Johnson's writing on the technology of culture and culture of technology 10 years ago when I read his Interface Culture: How New Technology Transform The Way We Create & Communicate . Back then — how quaint this now sounds — all the discussion was about the Desktop, about files, folders, icons, and the metaphors we used to organize our digital space. The iPod was still a glimmer in Steve Jobs' eye and the iPhone was an even longer way off.
Johnson is still interested in personal, popular technology and its effect on the way we communicate.
He has the cover story in this week's Time in which he looks at Twitter. It is rather grandly titled “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live”.
You may not care about Twitter or see much use in it but I'd still strongly recommend Johnson's piece for what it has to say about the value and significance of Twitter.
As for me, I was, as I've mentioned here before, initially sceptical about Twitter but, upon finding the appropriate interface for it by using a standalone application, I'm now a big fan of Twitter and I tend to agree with much of Johnson says in this piece. [See Political Twits and #ottawaspends ]
Some bits in the essay that stood out for me:
… [hashtag conversations are] built entirely out of 140-character messages, but the sum total of those tweets added up to something truly substantive, like a suspension bridge made of pebbles.
…Social networks are notoriously vulnerable to the fickle tastes of teens and 20-somethings (remember Friendster?), so it's entirely possible that three or four years from now, we'll have moved on to some Twitter successor. But the key elements of the Twitter platform — the follower structure, link-sharing, real-time searching — will persevere regardless of Twitter's fortunes, just as Web conventions like links, posts and feeds have endured over the past decade. In fact, every major channel of information will be Twitterfied in one way or another in the coming years . . .