of course! we've already been using email discussion lists for this, as well as Instant Messaging.
I don't have any issue with it in terms of the water cooler factor. great! fine! or the sociality factor. or the expanding way outward at the same time you wrap yourself in this cocoon of difference and protect yourself from the differences that are too big for you to deal with. tweet and twit and flit and myface as much as you or anyone else wants. say inane things. keep in touch with family and friends, old co-workers, old roomates or classmates. it's all good.
but the idea that it is changing the world in any special way (for good or ill) or that it is helping instantiate a new, more liberatory jouranlism or system of knowledge or democracy will finally be realized?
*that* is irritating. because to say all these things is to live in a bubble where you're ignorant of the way these same claims have been made since, well, at least since they made Desk Set starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. and yes, carrol, we know, we know -- least i do -- it's all been said before abotu other technologies. but that is what irritates: ignorance about the past. people have decided that print ushered in a technological revolution so every time there is a change in the way we communicate technologically, they think it's going to be revolution all over again.
football bats!
I personally don't give a crap about 'u' or 'k' or 'ty' 'tx' or 'r' or any of that. who cares? it used to be the horror of all horrors to use contractions in formal writing: do not, not don't, etc.
we'll survive. when news is run by tweets, people who can't stand it will figure out something else by which to get their substantive news. and they will hail it as a revolution in democracy then, too.
fuck all.
shag