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Global twittering

Harald Müller, the German dramatist, enjoyed provoking people. Like when he said "ten Germans are naturally more stupid than five". But what's provocative about that? It's just the plain and simple truth. In the same way as a crowd of ten Swiss people is more stupid than five.

Harald Müller is dead. But the Internet is very much alive. Thousands of people are congregating there. Are thousands of people more stupid than ten? Completely idiotic even?

Let's see. One of them writes an SMS - "Parents back from holiday. Any presents for me?", posts it on the Internet, and anyone who wants to read it, can do so. But what I don't understand is why people do it, why "micro blog" or "twitter" as it's also called?

Traditional bloggers post their thoughts and observations on the Internet. Some of it's enlightening, some is utter rubbish. Micro bloggers direct their SMS to the whole world, each and every one a miniature Pope replacing St. Peter's Square with Twitter.com as a stage from which to address the world. The type of thing people post in these net communities goes something like this: "Have been sitting on Bärenplatz in Berne for five minutes, still waiting for that damned beer." "The rain is stopping in New York but the sun isn't out yet." Odd trivialities, free at least, and luckily limited to 140 characters.

The really fascinating question remains: Why do people share the mundane details of their everyday lives with every man and his dog? The cartoon, "Twitter in Plain English" on YouTube, provides the answer: People love "sharing information about their everyday lives", but used to shy away from e-mailing "personal updates", such as "I'm drinking coffee" to a few friends, although, at the end of the day, life is made up of these sorts of minor everyday events. So it looks like Twitter has a raison d'être: charting life in shorthand.

The writer Jorge Luis Borges tells the story of a fictitious land, where cartographers couldn't rest until they created a map "which was on the same scale as the empire and that coincided with it point for point". A life sized map. Crazy idea. Not for Twitter. By recording the world's micro ramblings, it accurately reflects the real hubbub of mankind. Coherent but meaningless. It's not teaching us anything at any rate.

But is it making us more stupid? Just a minute. Clever or stupid, it's always a question of what we're talking about. People who merely "share" the details of what they're doing and what mood they're in with thousands of strangers are beyond help.

Harald Müller was right. Ten are more stupid than five. And thousands really are damned idiotic.
 

Ludwig Hasler