It's supposed to be automatic but actually you have to press the button.

Soo, as often happens, this is not the post i intended to write. i may get back to that one - it'll keep. Well, this one would keep too, but it jumped into my brain last night and almost kept me from sleeping, so to prevent any recurrence of THAT, this one's getting written. In which i shall discuss Web 2.0 Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones, or perhaps why Twitter is the real-life equivalent of Scanalyzer. (since i won't be referencing the Delaney story again, you might want to read about it over there. The two are closely linked in my head, however).

Depending on your inherent Sci-Fi Geek Quotient, you're either saying Yes, Do Go On, or, WTF wufkitn, you've lost me again. For the latter group: Scanalyzer is a concept employed by John Brunner in one of my favorite SF books, "Stand On Zanzibar". Which i shall be re-reading starting an hour or three ago, its been too long. Brunner refers to SoZ as a 'non-novel', composed using "Spicers Plus Fabric Bond and Commercial Bank interleaved with Serillo carbons in a Smith Corona electric typewriter fitted with a Kolok black-record ribbon." i quote that to give you an idea of the quantum leaps we've made since he wrote it - the book was published in 1968, but is set 42 years (!) in the (then) future.

Scanalyzer is something like a news program (i'm drawing from memory, and haven't read it in a few years), that is customizable to the viewer using a 'homimage' attachment so that Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere ("or Mr. and Miss, or Miss and Miss, or Mister and Mister, take your pick hah hah!") appear on the screen bearing the viewer's own face. "The INdepth, INdependent, INmediate, INterface between you and your world!" Starting to see why i pulled this off the shelf just now?

We may not yet be to the point where you can see yourself and your significant other sitting prominently in the audience at the Oscars, for instance; but are we really that far behind? We've still got almost two years to catch up to Brunner's projected future, anyway. Instead, we can has INstant updates and commentary, which we can participate directly in. 'Way to ruin a song #idol'. Should someone decide my snide remarks are Worthy and re-tweet me, i could potentially make that observation to an eighth of a million people, according to Twitalyzer.. whose name is starting to sound eerily familiar.

Ah social media, how i love to hate thee. Only a few short months ago, your dear old granny wufkitn hadn't even heard the term 'social media'; now i'm immersed in studying and participating in it on a daily basis. And i've made some interesting discoveries here in twenty-oh-nine.

For one, despite the notion of Web 2.0 making us all participants, i'm finding that i spend MUCH less time contributing to 'net life, and much more consuming it. Perhaps i'm simply out of step with the curve on this one, i don't know. Ten-plus years ago, i spent nearly every evening online, answering emails and participating in (on?) e-lists. A year or so before that and newsgroups were my favored activity; a few years later and i became active on LiveJournal, then MySpace. Now its Facebook and Twitter.

i really liked Twitter once i discovered LoudTwitter, as i could make brief notes as the day went along and then have them gathered and posted to my journal. w00, instant blog update! But after a few months, i started seeing friends posts asking if there was a way to block people's Twitter feeds from their friends list, observing it will be a sad day when all that's left of LJ are feeds - one friend mournfully noted that all they see of me now are scraps, like gnawing shreds of meat off a chicken bone. Facebook's status updates aren't much better - true, they allow threaded comments, a semblance of the discussions that used to occur on the old lists. But the nature of the beast means you'll never get the sort of in-depth conversations going that we had back in my day, when we had to connect using a 9600baud modem on dial-up and we LIKED it, by gum!

That sounds horrifically antique, now, though not so much as the idea that when i worked the First College computer lab, our *hot* Mac had a whopping 1mb HD and could run System ~6~. And a version of Photoshop that fit on a single floppy disk. Yes, i am a geezer, why do you ask? Heh. Seriously, tho, things are moving so fast now that i feel like the Twitter i'd gotten to know and love last month is already an outdated concept. Which i didn't really know, because i'm old and slow to grasp such things, until i started reading blogs and websites that told me just how behind i am.

Imagine - four weeks ago, i thought Twitter was for keeping up with my friends and some interesting strangers. How quaint! i had no idea that i was 'supposed' to be re-tweeting, and using #hashtags, and increasing my *influence*. According to one of these websites - i've already lost track of which - the average power-tweeter has something like 550 friends. Your old granny only follows about a quarter of that. And while i've been grumbly about the fact that my cheapie minute phone doesn't participate in SMS services (so no updates when i'm offline), i'm starting to be grateful i CAN'T get Twitter updates sent to my phone. Somehow, i'm 'supposed' to read updates from over 500 people whose posting velocity oustrips my own, check out their links, participate in conversations via @replies and DMs, find more friends, attract more followers and.. um, i forget what else. Cause i'm old. Oh yeah - write a blog.

But since i'm not a "pro-blogger", larding my posts with cleverly 'shopped photo montages of the life i find time to lead in _between_ all these updates, i do at times commit the heresy of getting off the computer. To do horribly old-fashioned things like read books, or meet real people, in real time, in real places. However, i'm starting to wonder if the fabulous world of 'Twenty-TEN come AGAIN!' really *is* where we're headed. Why ever move my arse from this chair, when i can just stream video chat with people around the world, eager to share their observations on the program we're all tuned in to, of course, because that's what good little lemmings do, right? Look, there i am, front row center! Wow! i guess its just like being there.. assuming there IS a there, There.. Why actually bother going out and living life, when you can stay at home and tweet about your virtual one?

#LoveHateDreamsLifeWorkPlayFriendshipSex. Why should i bother to explain myself when you can google it? (Relax, David. Open your eyes.)