Transition Culture

What a lot of nonesense. Twitter is a tool for communication and networking. Mr James doesn’t know what he is talking about.

I use Twitter to talk with other Transition activists across the world and have a perfectly good sense of identity.

This sounds like uninformed snobbery to me.

Yeah, you should try actually using it before getting being “scathing” about it.

It’s a very quick way of receiving news updates from BBC, Al-J, etc and for colleagues to share links to info.

Indeed folks, good points… I’m sure for those who ‘twit’ it is a very useful tool, and that within a year or two we’ll all be doing it and wondering how we ever lived without it. I have long been someone who drags his heels where new technologies are concerned, I still have all my vinyl records, I held off learning to use a computer as long as I could, and I resisted mobile phones for many years.

What I was pointing to was the article I read, which was about people who ‘twitter’ all day about their getting on the bus, eating toast, having a pint and so on. Strikes me that that is a particularly odd phenomenon, but maybe I’m just an old git who only in the last few months mastered the art of predictive text.

I think there is something alarming about assuming anyone is interested… but then as I pointed out, I do much the same here at Transition Culture. Using it in the way you point out Sam sounds great, the article I read didn’t mention being able to use it for useful stuff like that, rather it had quotes from Russell Brand’s twittering, which wasn’t especially edifying.

‘Uninformed snobbery’, quite possibly. More like alarmed Ludditism, technophobia, mixed with bewilderment having read this perplexing article. The ‘twit’ referred to in the heading was, after all, me.

I am a recent convert to Twitter and have begun to see its place in the scheme of things. I agree with Rob’s comments about the minuate of daily life.

Like many people I lead multiple lives – a work life, a transition life and all sorts of others that I don’t particularly want mixed up. So the same issues arose for me with Facebook which I started to join one particular thing but then found people I knew from all sorts of encounters wanting to be my Facebook friend. I have found it is a way to stay in touch with friends who are not close by and that is a good thing. What Facebook lacks for me is to be able to alter the content according to different groups of friends.

With Twitter the solution I have come to is to have a work Twitter account and a non-work one. On the work one I have found it a useful way to share bits of news that I havn’t yet (or might not ever) write up as a full news item on the news website I run. Handy for sharing and making quick comments on breaking news.

So personally I hope Rob that you get Twittering and sharing you short comments on things you come across or news that you hear and find interesting – that might not make it to your blog. Give it a go I say!

We have Twitter bar on the Transition westcliff website http://www.transitionwestcliff.org.uk , quite useful for those little news updates that don’t warrant a full blown blog entry but still let people know that we are active and ‘doing stuff’, however small.

“…assuming you have the remotest interest in my last few days”

I hope you’re not planning on expiring soon.

I am reading a blog. Just thought you’d like to know.

I’ve found Twitter to be both a distraction in the last three weeks, and a blessing. I
* joined up with strangers in 175 cities to hold parties to fundraise for clean water in the third world (we raised $3600 in 10 days in my city)
* connected with some forward thinking London-ites to trade ideas about environmental economy (mostly I listened and read suggested posts and websites)
* have checked the http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23transitiontowns page to find other Transiton-ites, another of whom is joining me in encouraging folks to follow
http://twitter.com/billmckibben

Twitter is kind of like EnergyBulletin.net, which has one sentence headlines which refer one to multiple paragraph summaries which refer one to orginal articles.

Although when it comes to writing about one is eating, it’s interesting to note that Bill McKibben actually did that a few years ago, made money by selling a book about it, and helped launch a movement (and a few other books).

http://twitter.com/noimpactman uses twitter exclusively to let folks know when he has a new post– transition culture could do that, too!

I hope this has been helpful.

I am spending too much time online. My left knee is itchy. I’m also keeping all my old vinyl records. Twitter, twitter…hooray I am someone!

I read this posty blog by Rob yesterday and then within half an hour later a mate phoned and told me to join up to Twitter…so I signed up to see what the fuss is all about – my only friend on Twitter was ‘Number 10’ (Downing Street).

Today. I’ve now forgotten my Twitter password, along with all the other passwords on umpteen websites. I thought my password was brianadams (i’m not a fan but figured i might remember it)…turns out i was wrong on that cuz my brianadams password isn’t working.

So I’ve asked for a Twitter password reset, but I can’t remember which email address I used and therefore can’t gain access?

Have I run out of characters here yet?

…ah, No!…would you like to hear some more Twittwerings anyone?…anybody?…out there?….somewhere?
Did anyone here watch Eastenders last night? (i didn’t).

It’s nice to know that Number 10 are probably tracking my every move via the Twitter thing:

“Hello Gordon, hope you are having a nice day, stop the airport expansion plans please – love you if you do, steve x”

Twitter and similar services can in fact be very powerful enhancers of collective intelligence for communities of all types.

Tweeting, is in fact a very similar way to how all social insects communicate – with lots of short, timely messages.

A similar idea that builds on this concept is bioteams, see e.g. http://www.bioteams.com/

In my experience most people do not inanely go on about what they are up to (although some do – if you don’t add real value no one follows you), but share anything that they think is important or timely.

Tweeting recently resulting in me meeting someone I’d know online for years face to face for the first time…

I heard from my friend Dougald at School of Everything (who are helping with one of the Transition Web Project pilots, incidentally) about a Temporary School of Thought that was due to open the following week in a squat in Mayfair.

I tweeted that I was about to go check the space out and Vinay Gupta of Hexayurt and Global Swadeshi fame saw my tweet.

As I walked in the door, their phone rang. It was for me. It was Vinay saying he wasn’t far away and should he pop by. He did so, which lead to him giving many brilliant talks* (and attending some too). The video he shot of the place ended up on the Evening Standard website the next day.

In fact, a whole new Institute of Collapsonomics is emerging out of the meetings that began with that one tweet!

Vinay’s write up of the day is here:
http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/personal/yesterday-was-an-amazing-day-1142

Dougald’s nice round up of the fantastic Temporary School (which included workshops on welding, treehouse building, meditation and everything in between, all for free) see:
http://otherexcuses.blogspot.com/2009/01/temporary-school-of-thought-round-up.html

This is just a link-less comment to bring Rob’s attention to that fact I’ve got a nice linky one in moderation 😉

Smiles,

Josef.

Would that be a naughty link Josef?

Have you been placed on the naughty earthen step because you’ve been naughty, just waiting to be let back inside?

Ha ha! (i know the feeling).

Heh, no not naughty links, lovely useful ones.

I often include lots of useful links in my comments, but that tends to result in my comments ending up in moderation and getting stuck there for ages…

I’ll keep a look out for that. cheers : )

Oh let’s please remember to look and feel the sky, the trees, the birds the bees and each other or our brains will turn square and our hearts will atrophy…

I think that it’s the use to which we put this sort of technology that either means it is controlling us or we are controlling it. Some commentators to this blog have noted that Twitter is useful for communicating and networking with others, and I am sure that is true. I was alarmed this week though, at a report in The Guardian by a neuroscientist which argued that such sites as Twitter, Bebo and Facebook “risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity”
I have noticed for myself that young people who frequently use these sites are very difficult to communicate with, use very short sentences and can spend hours sitting in a room with other people, glued to Facebook and not uttering a single word. Is this our future generation of farmers, builders, craftspeople, artists etc who will be the ones to steer us through a world in transition? If so, then we may have a problem. See the article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/24/social-networking-site-changing-childrens-brains

Thanks for the Guardian link Jane, interesting : )

I felt from reading the article that we have a major doom-gloom problem here. Understandably there should be concerns.

However, I felt reading comments to the article painted a more balanced light on it all.

Whilst people often get addicted to Xbox games, text messaging, facebook, twitter commenting, etc, I also think our natural occurring state of ‘boredom’ can help addicted folk.

I quite often ponder if we might actually be much happier and more connected with Peak Oil? – it would certainly be different. Perhaps regular electricity power cuts could help accelerate more communal activities?

“Dear Number 10,c/o Gordan, please can we try some electricity power cuts to see if we can still communicate beyond 140 twitter characters please? peace n love steve”

; )

The following might sweeten the twitter pill for me (and you might like the link below too):

LISTEN WHILE YOU TWITTER
Twisten.fm is a new service to listen to music on Twitter. Pronounced “twissen”, the service crawls Twitter for tweets about music, then adds a play button so that you can listen to the song being talked about. Visit the site, sign in, and search for an artist or favourite song. You will see all the tweets from people who recently heard the same music.
http://www.twisten.fm

MUSIC TALK
Sing or hum a tune, or just talk about it; use your voice to find the album track or music video you’re looking for with this almost hands-free search engine.
http://www.midomi.com

Oh really, if you want to worry about a media outlet have a go at the TV, completely brain rot drivel.

On the web, yes young people play a lot of games and spend hours on social networking sites. They are also arranging demonstrations via Facebook, forming communities on Ning, using Flickr and YouTube to spread the word and organise..

Leave them alone, they kids are aright

I am aware that some people struggle with the idea of Twitter. Probably everyone’s experience of it is something quite different. It probably takes a fair bit of work and creative thinking and perhaps also some luck to find the people that you need to find.

I am a transition town member, I actually became a twitter user about 6 weeks ago because I found my transition group was simply becoming too inward looking. I knew I needed to find the way to break out of this if we were to have any chance of making things work.

Using Twitter has given me access to many creative, and positive people, who understand communication and are working towards solutions to a whole range of different problems. I feel very good about knowing that there are that many kindred spirits out there.

If along the way I end up with a passing knowledge of their pets or family or taste in food or music, that is just something that makes communication a little easier.

The sharing through twitter potentially makes what we are all doing in individual groups stronger and more effective.

You cannot make a blanket comment about twitter that will make any sense. Everyone twitters for different reasons and in different ways. It is just a tool for communication. – and that is something we need.

What a lot of nonsense. Twitter is just another experiment in internet communication. Whether people use it to receive news feeds, find people with similar interests, or just to tell the world what their dog is having for its tea, the fact is Twitter itself is simply a tool, just like a telephone, email, sms, or a blog. People use it in all sorts of ways.

The internet is evolving, and Transition probably wouldn’t exist without it, so please, enough of the ill-informed judgements. Don’t push people away with snobbery.

To follow talk of transition towns on Twitter, you can use the “hashtag” (searchcode” #transitiontowns at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23transitiontowns

I’m torn on twitter. I have an account that posts the headlines from my blog, but otherwise I can’t be bothered updating people with my activities. I’m really not that interesting.

On the other hand, the moment I posted a twitter update on Transition Towns all these people from other networks came and said hello. So it is a useful networking thing at the same time.

Martin said:

“Oh really, if you want to worry about a media outlet have a go at the TV, completely brain rot drivel.

On the web, yes young people play a lot of games and spend hours on social networking sites. They are also arranging demonstrations via Facebook, forming communities on Ning, using Flickr and YouTube to spread the word and organise.. ”

I 100% totally agree. Mainstream corporate media is a MUCH MUCH MUCH bigger cause of brain rot than the internet (and that very much includes broadsheets and includes the Guardian too), including twitter, which can be VERY VERY empowering.

Andrew said:

”

What a lot of nonsense. Twitter is just another experiment in internet communication. Whether people use it to receive news feeds, find people with similar interests, or just to tell the world what their dog is having for its tea, the fact is Twitter itself is simply a tool, just like a telephone, email, sms, or a blog. People use it in all sorts of ways.

The internet is evolving, and Transition probably wouldn’t exist without it, so please, enough of the ill-informed judgements. Don’t push people away with snobbery.”

I 100% totally agree with that too.

Josef.

Jane Buttigieg said:

“I was alarmed this week though, at a report in The Guardian by a neuroscientist which argued that such sites as Twitter, Bebo and Facebook “risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity”
I have noticed for myself that young people who frequently use these sites are very difficult to communicate with, use very short sentences and can spend hours sitting in a room with other people, glued to Facebook and not uttering a single word. Is this our future generation of farmers, builders, craftspeople, artists etc who will be the ones to steer us through a world in transition? If so, then we may have a problem. See the article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/24/social-networking-site-changing-childrens-brains”

This sounds like a lot of quackery to me.

What IS dangerous is this sort of broad-brush demonisation of an entire generation of people. Sure, some will be incommunicative and dull, and will struggle to find their place in the world. But some will harness this sort of technology to do incredible things.

In fact, if you search Twitter you will find a large number of intelligent, articulate teenagers who enjoy sharing ideas with one another – something I didn’t have the opportunity to do when I was growing up in the late 80s and 90s.

I’ve noticed a certain anti-technology bias among some Transition folk. While I understand their caution it would be crazy not to fully use all these channels, especially in the fast growing area of Social Media.

Martin said:

“it would be crazy not to fully use all these channels, especially in the fast growing area of Social Media.”

Quite.

BTW, a nice blog post about Social Media vs. Recession here:

http://otherexcuses.blogspot.com/2009/01/social-media-vs-recession.html

With update here:
http://otherexcuses.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-media-vs-recession-update.html

🙂

http://twitter.com/jdaviescoates 😉
http://identi.ca/jdaviescoates

I think that we seem to be forgetting that the internet will be one of the casualties of the energy crunch.
Pete

Pete: I’ll accept that the Internet as we know it now (e.g. nearly 3 years of new video footage being added to youtube each and every day) will struggle and almost certainly no be as available as it is now, but its not and all or nothing thing.

The Internet will exist. Yes, it uses a fair bit of energy, but so do our brains and I wouldn’t want to turn that off just to keep my heart pumping.

No one can say for sure how things will turn out, but I for one think that those who predict “there will be no Internet at all” are both ignoring the fact that its network structure is inherently resilient and massively underestimate how much people value communications infrastructure.

But it will not be hard to keep low power mesh networks going in local areas, and then to link those networks to their neighbouring networks and so on.

See, for example this free book, Wireless Networking in the Developing World:
http://wndw.net/

And low power PCs such as http://www.aleutia.com/ (one of MANY)

Josef.

This is just another non-linky post to highlight that I’ve got another 2 in moderation 😛

Pete – I’m not so sure it will be a casualty. When resources are becoming limited everyone will be rethinking priorities. In the positive view we will be limiting our energy uses and electricity will go to where it is needed most, if controlled. If that includes the vast network of global information/sharing/international comms/etc that is now accumulated on the internet then that may be a priority along with food production/community support systems/resource sharing/etc. All of these things can be supported by electronic communication & education.

The internet and mobile phones will help us feel less isolated from the rest of the world even though we may be living a more local life.

I agree that the internet will be a resilient part of our future. It has been designed as a resilient network. It is one of the thinhgs that will mean that any return to a localised life will mean a simple return to the past but we will still be able to be connected to people all around the world. This will be of great intelectual and social benefit.

Mobile phones networks will also be a part of our futre as well and I believe that keeping their networks functioning will be a priority as they also bring many social and economic benefits.

For example a recent Wireless Intelligence report found that with every ten per cent increase in mobile phone penetration, a country’s GDP increases by 0.6 per cent.

For a wonderful and hopeful piece on the role of mobiles and the internet read my friend Vinay Gupta’s article on The Future of Poverty here:
http://agit8.org.uk/?p=268

Highly recommended.

Josef.

If most of our electricity is generated locally it will be difficult to be able to have a guaranteed supply that would be needed to run these services. I believe they already take a high proportion of generated electricity. It would be a boon if they can keep running but I think that the energy required to keep all the servers running and safe 24/7 will be too much for what will be limited resources.
Pete

Hi Pete,

I’ve addressed you point above in a comment that is still in moderation.

Whilst I’m here basically what I said was that is not all or nothing…

You are probably correct keep “all the servers running and safe 24/7 will be too much” but that doesn’t mean we can’t runs lots of them lots of the time, especially given the now many low power options that exist 🙂

I think many writers in the past (e.g. Orwell, Le Guin, Huxley) have speculated and agonised about the role or effect of information technology in a free society. The free flow of information seems important. However the issue of who CONTROLS technology is crucial. The internet is indeed designed to be resilient and to allow some decentralised control but we have already seen it become a political battleground (e.g. internet use in China, email tapping in the UK) and the future isn’t clear. Additionally we mustn’t forget the enormous infrastructure (networks, cabling, manufacturing, satellites) that underlies our apparantly simple use of a PC or mobile phone. Are you sure that this is all viable, everywhere, sustainably? The cultural effects should also be considered. What happens to local cultures when everyone uses mobile phones and PCs and does that promote resilience or happiness? I also think that those most in favour of constantly being online tend to become a bit cliquely and to assume that ‘everyone is like us’ because they tend to communicate with other people who are indeed ‘like them’. It is dangerous to assume that the rest of society is indeed ‘like us’.

Some of us are old enough to remember the days before the internet in the 80s and early 90s when one could communicate electronically both with email and bulletin boards using Fidonet. This was the days of 300 baud modems often put onto acoustic couplers to pass the information from one node to another. So there are various ways for local electronic information systems to be connected to each other and the internet that will make the approach resilient. Fidonet still exists today and uses the internet as its backbone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet

There is a nice discussion on resilient communications infrastructure here:

http://www.globalswadeshi.net/forum/topics/resilient-p2p-communication

BTW, anyone who is interested in learning about or sharing knowledge of open source appropriate technologies really should join Global Swadeshi 🙂

Check out the NZ TT twitters… this is the #nztt tag http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23nztt. Judge for yourself its useful. It could be seen as a sense of the heartbeat of TT in New Zealand, when more people get onto it. I have struggled to get people to “tell their stories” of what they have been doing on blogs and pages of the http://www.tt.org.nz site. This could be the thing that makes it possible for people to let each other know just how much activity is going on out there.

Hi James, excellent use of Twitter!

The 25 Similarities between Twitter & LSD:

Tune in, turn on and tweet out.

http://philbaumann.com/2009/04/19/twitter-lsd-25-similarities/