Let them eat tweets

24 May 2009 | 15:19 - By Stefano Boscutti

Twitter can be entertaining, and useful - and, really, who doesn't like the illusion, from time to time, of lots of company?

letthem_1841967095

It's only lately that Virginia Heffernan has begun to wonder whether she'd use Twitter if she were fully at liberty to do what she liked. In other words, she's not sure she'd use Twitter if she was rich. These worries started to surface for me last month, when Bruce Sterling, the cyberpunk writer, proposed at the South by Southwest tech conference in Austin that the clearest symbol of poverty is dependence on "connections" like the Internet, Skype and texting. "Poor folk love their cellphones!" he said.  Is connectivity the plight of the poor?  Is connectivity poverty?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19wwln-medium-t.html

Share article: 
top

Join the discussion

You have characters remaining.
Validation (
) :
This is a captcha-picture. It is used to prevent mass-access by robots.

PLEASE NOTE: All submitted comments become the property of SBS. We reserve the right to edit and/or amend submitted comments. HTML tags other than paragraph, line break, bold or italics will be removed from your comment.

About this Blog

New New Media looks at how our mediascape is exploding to bits. How the latest technology and the internet are changing the way we live, work and play. How the latest media is shaping us all.

Stefano Boscutti is an executive creative director and strategist. He's like a better looking version of Todd Sampson. He also has an abiding faith that stories and wordplay (and not powerpoint presentations) will change the world.

 
ADVERTISEMENT