>
> For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming
> The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents “a way of
> making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody
> is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s
> like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is
> still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.”
I have to wonder whether "permanently" is the right adjective when describing virtual connections on the Internet. Of course, that's the illusion that many have.
I'd also point out there's a "open source" Twitter: Laconica, which a number of microblogging sites run:
identi.ca has a Facebook connection, if you're thinking about switching.
Best, Charles