Someone I couldn’t identify on the Get Ambition panel said performance was as far away from conversation as is possible.
A few months back someone on Twitter, I think it was @dubber, said Twitter was “performance conversation”.
I’ve been thinking about this concept for a while. I think I need to think about it some more.
I follow a fair few arts organisations on Twitter at the moment and I’ve noticed a fair number of requests for stuff. Take this recent one from Come:Unity Arts:
Empty shops/houses needed for use as exhibition space in North West Birmingham: 24th – 26th July 2009
A few of these orgs have a healthy following but most of them have just started out. If I think I can help I’ll retweet, as I did here which resulted in this, and I know others will too but that’s not sustainable in the long term. This is an indication of a problem in need of a solution.
I wonder what that might be?
I don’t think any of Dave Winer’s solutions to the Twitter problem are quite right but yes, there is a Twitter problem. As Dave puts it: “We are building a dangerously precarious centralized system that will, given everything we know about computer networks, at some point, fail.”
The thing is, I’m sort of looking forward to when Twitter fails. It’ll really shake things up and that’s always interesting.
Some quick thoughts on how today’s Soho fire was broken and covered on Twitter.
Firstly this isn’t new. We’ve seen it before. But the mundane nature of it all is interesting – no-one’s saying “omg I’m reporting a fire on Twitter!” They’re just reporting the fire. So too is the scale. There’s not one iconic photo – there are hundreds.
Twitter is not the interesting thing here. This is mass adoption on an attitude and an approach which has been developed through play. People are taking the hashtag system the use for silly games and the “conversation as performance” format and applying it to something serious.
Filtering is an issue, as always, but it’s not that hard. It’s easy to pick out the three irrelevant photos from above. Similarly when the news was breaking and before there was a “proper” news piece it was possible to determine the location quite accurately by looking for patterns in the tweets.
There’s no “how” or “why” here, merely the statement that something happened. But that’s fine. Twitter is about statements that something happened (“what are you doing?”) and there are plenty of other social media tools and environments for answering those questions. Wikipedia, for example, or closer to home (ie, in the same office as me) Help Me Investigate. My point being criticising Twitter for only doing breaking news well is missing the point.
The BBC news coverage kicked in 45 minutes after Twitter which, to be honest, is not bad at all. There’s some good stuff in there with facts that come from building up networks of sources and the reputation to access them. But the photo doesn’t compare. Again, Twitter (along with Twitpic) does the breaking well. BBC are catching up though.
Video from the scene. That’s a new development. Expect to see more of that.
Today the Birmingham Post published a rather silly article about social media. Interestingly while it was mainly about Facebook the title was John Lamb: Banalities of Twitter. Soon enough the Twitter-using folk of Birmingham picked up on this and piled into the comments making it the Post’s biggest story of the day according to the editor. That alone is interesting (is traffic to the Post’s site so low that a few hundred hits from the likes of us can tip the balance?) but it was the phenomena that really got me. And since it’s complex and nuanced I decided it would best be explained with a couple of captioned photos.
M’fellow traveler Chris Unitt used the first one in his riposte which was nice but they really were supposed to be read as a pair, so here they are.
Yes, they’re not that funny. Yes, I can do better. That’s why they’re on this blog rather than ASH-10 proper.
I threw this out there yesterday:
Think I need to define serendipity. Keep using the term but what actually makes for a serendipitous environment?
Which promoted a whole load of thoughts from others. Here’s a dump of them.
tomewing: Oddly I just turned in a column on this for Pitchfork! I wd say broadly that you can’t have serendipity without risk.
Me: I’m thinking more fundamentally it’s about increasing connections and network complexity. Which does = risk.tomewing: Yeah, agreed – in the piece I think I talked about it happening when communities (defined however you like) overlap.
MentalArtsBrum: A serendipitious environment ie: one that allows fortuitous happenings by accident, needs structure/formal processes plus an ethos that encourages new ideas, sponanteity & democracy, fosters meaningful connections and is responsive & non-judgemental.
theaardvark: A serendipitous environment needs to be chaotic. If something happens in non-chaos it’s not serendiptous but “well organised”.
ffolliet: Chance favours the prepared mind. Louis Pasteur
midge_uk: Surely a Serndip’ env’ is one with a ratio of chaos to opportunity 60/40, 70/30, 20/80, etc ??…
Me: I’m uncomfortable with chaos. Sounds too close to random which I’ve rejected. Might need better def of chaos too!
midge_uk: Then i suggest you read this or some books on Fractals http://tinyurl.com/mohtv6 (ie. Chaos needn’t be Chaotic)
Me: Indeed. But the common use of “chaos” is unstructured, unorganised, no rules, random, which is what I was rejecting as boring.
midge_uk: Lol, the pickles you get into when you try to redfine perfectly serviceable words :)
Ed_Hart: A serendipitous environment is anytime, anyplace, anywhere, as long as you are paying attention.
Me: Yeah, maybe I’m trying to hold water in a net here. Maybe it’s one of @stef’s accelerated serendipitous environments?
Jo_Ind: I don’t know what serendipity is. I get the feeling @peteashton etc are using the word differently from the way normally used.
stef: I agree Ed, but the keyword for me is _accelerated_
theaardvark: But serendipity is what arises from chance, random meetings. As soon as you restrict the random you lose the serendipitous.
MentalArtsBrum: Thinking about ’serendipitous environment’ whilst hoovering. Surely if one plans for serendipity, it is no longer serendipity?
Me: That’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out. If it’s not serendipitous then what is it? (semi rhetorical question ;)
podnosh: Unh? Serendipity requires accident and randomness. Otherwise it is contrived or managed or controlled or…
LSpurdle: Serendipitous environment? Open, unblinkered, mobile/unanchored, flexible, fluid, welcoming? or a place where you take ideas and ideas take you!
Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and input.
