It’s nigh amazing how much time one can spend to get things right. One of my favorite ironies is this: computers were originally envisioned as labor-saving devices, but the more we have incorporated computers into our lives, personal and professional, the more it seems that we are scrambling to catch up to them. Which is the tail now, and which the dog?
For example, I enjoy web design now and then. I like to see what I can come up with; experimentation is fun. But, just to get that one spacing right, or that string of text to display just so, takes up so much time that I have to wonder if it’s worth it, and/or what the real challenge is: to keep up with the tail, or to abide the dog.
OK, not the best… example? No. Metaphor? I’ll settle for that, but honestly I can’t define it other than to remember that “a rose is a rose is a rose”, or “no ideas but in things”. (And while I’m on the subject, shouldn’t the period always land after the quote?)
Ah, but I think I dissemble. Now there’s a word long unused, but it well applies to self-promotion, politics in particular. Then the rhetorical program calls for a tangent so that one may move on and not get pinned down, caught, and so another topic is due.
Thus back to my opening: after so much time hacking away, I can now rest assured that my tweets (I don’t really like the term either, but we’re stuck with it) are archived so that one day some semblance (or re-semblance) of history is known, at least to me. It’s not ironic, but Twitter, or tweeting if you will, is the perfect outgrowth of the increasingly ephemeral nature of communication, in which what was said five minutes ago is barely remembered, either from the deluge of it, or because of its vapidity.
I can’t say I mind that the tide of reaction is coming in, even as I disagree and think Twitter is more deserving of the much-maligned “Web 2.0″ moniker than other things, largely because it furthers the vision of sharing documents via hypertext.
But I’m getting off track, for my intention was to share if not a document, then my working addition to archiving one’s tweets, which is here for those interested in pursuing it, and of course to offer another passage from The True Believer, fitting in.
Imitation is often a shortcut to a solution. We copy when we lack the inclination, the ability or the time to work out an independent solution. People in a hurry will imitate more readily than people at leisure. Hustling thus tends to produce uniformity. And in the deliberate fusing of individuals into a compact group, incessant action will play a considerable role. 3.14.81
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