---- Bob W <p...@web-options.com> wrote: > > > > > > Twitter seems to me to be instant messaging, without the > > > > > > instant, archived to preserve the banality for posterity. > > > > > > > > > > Someday that Twitter archive could be as fascinating and > > > > important as > > > > > the Vindolanda letters. > > > > > > > > It will need to be soaked in a cess pit for about 2000 > > years, first. > > > > > > Welcome to the internet. > > > > Yes but 2000 years? We'll have much more important things to > > spend our electricity on long before then. > > > > The Vindolanda letters are the Twitterus of the day. "Send more socks, it's > cold up here. Signed, Biggus Dickus"; "Come to my party. Signed, The CO's > Wife". If that's not banality I don't know what is. And yet, that's what > we're interested in. Put on an exhibition about Virgil's Aeneid and you > could probably count the audience on one hand, but the British people, > including me, voted the Vindolanda letters the most interesting and > important historical artifacts we have. That's what Twitter is, too.
But those tweets are exceedingly rare. Like the "there's nobody down here but us wineskins" type graffiti from Pompei, they are interesting because they show how banal and otherwise human empire makers actually are. The accumulated effluvia of the internet, mostly by and from people whose most important decision is what to put on their toast this morning, pales into insignificance. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
