Ok, I’ve never ‘got it’, I never was a fan of Twitter (or other similar real-time mass messaging services). Twitter appeared that it was nothing more than a steady stream of people all spewing their thoughts – yet with everyone shouting at the same time – and nobody really listening. But in the past week I’ve changed my opinion. I get Twitter now! And I now think it and similar services are providing us with a new profound stage in the development of the web. And it’s rather exciting.
So what I’ve been thinking … is what if Twitter, Facebook wall posts and other similar services are developing into the short term memory of the internet?
It was an article in the August 2009 issue of Wired Magazine that had an opinion piece – “Remembering Not to Remember in an Age of Unlimited Memory” penned by Clive Thompson. The commentary talked of how human’s were now having to confront the reality that what they say, what they post may live on forever in a digital world. That the ease of archiving allows for information to be retained indefinitely. But it really got me thinking – maybe there’s something wonderful about having all your day to day interactions, thoughts remembered. What I began pondering was what is ‘memory’ in terms of the internet. We know that the internet is a great archive of past events and ‘old’ content – but we don’t, until recently has the web been able to tell us what’’s currently on it’s mind.
Well I think ‘real time’ is the final step in transforming the internet from a static entity into a fully functioning brain – with humans filling in the role of decision making, empithy and rationalization components of the memory system.
Think of it this way Internet already entails many of other other components that build the basis for a brain. We have the long term memory (site content and archives), sight (images and video), sound, languages, and ability to recall all of this information on demand. But what has been missing is short term memory.
So Twitter, especially via it’s trend tracking is showing what at this minute is on the mind of internet users – in real-time – with no “archives” skewing the results (like a search on Google News that will produce older material). Not all of the trends are of particular interest long term, but some will resonate and live on and grow in importance – which will essentially etch them to the web’s more permanent “memory”. For instance it’s reported that new movie releases that trend well see a huge spike in ticket sales. Therefore our short term desires/thoughts – “what movie do I want to see”, becomes encoded to memory – through the actions of it’s users.
So think about this for a bit – but the implications are rather amazing. Especially if it’s targeted – we could via software begin creating a more, well rounded functioning internet by incorporating these largely dismissed real-time search and posting systems.
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