My full interview with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is up on Mother Jones. You can also listen to the podcast of our conversation thru iTunes.
Here’s a chunk of it that I especially enjoy where he talks about the evolution of human communication away from the one-to-one structure and into the one-to-many.
MJ: It seems like Twitter has been criticized somewhat for being the ultimate example of a narcissistic age. Now that we’re moving more into an age of shared sacrifice and sobriety is the Twitter theme still going to be in the zeitgeist?
BS: I think what we’re actually seeing is humans as a species evolving the way they communicate. We’re moving away from more traditional forms of electronic communication like email or instant messaging. We’re moving into a space where we communicate openly because there’s a lot more value in it. And frankly we’re just catching up to other species that have been doing it for millions of years, and doing it really well to their advantage. And so what I see over the last ten years is—and it’s not just Twitter, although Twitter is a very sort of perfect example of it—but over the last ten years with the evolution of blogging and Flickr and MySpace and Facebook and all these services, we’re seeing people move their communications from this ‘one-to-one’ scenario to this ‘one-to-many’ scenario and ideally letting others in on the conversation, attracting others to themselves, and in many ways just creating value out of this.
MJ: Last year Twitter helped Barack Obama get elected President, helped the LA Fire Department communicate endangered residents, helped many people deal with getting laid off in the recession, helped connect concert-goers at South by Southwest music festival, helped protestors follow the Olympic torch through San Francisco, helped a UC Berkeley graduate journalism student get himself out of an Egyptian prison… What can’t Twitter do?
BS: Well I think the bigger question is, ‘What can’t people do when they can collaborate in real time and network in such a way?’ Twitter is really just about unlocking the value of human spirit really. What you see when you look at Twitter during and after an earthquake, what we’re really seeing is people helping one another, coordinating in real time using a tool that didn’t exist before we made Twitter. It’s the ability to essentially move just like a flock of birds can move around an object in real time, and it can look very choreographed and beautiful. They are really just basing that moving off of a set of rudimentary communications and feedback. And that’s what Twitter provides. It’s this very simply utility that allows people to very quickly communicate with one another in these short bursts, and in such a way coordinate themselves in real time so they can move as one like a flock of birds. So when you talk about all these different scenarios you’re really just talking about people doing what they would natural do but using this new tool that gives them an enhanced form of communication.
Tags: biz stone, Mother Jones, twitter
March 18, 2009 at 4:23 pm |
There’s something creepy about all this happytalk about Twitter and social networking. I know that people want to think somehow that technology will ultimately save us, but we’re a lazy, anti-rational, anti-intellectual culture. While I occasionally find something of value checking my Twitter page, more often than not I’m like, “holy fuck–are people really that superficial and vapid?”
With all due respect to Mr. Stone and his glowing endorsement of Twitter, I’m still finding greed, narcissism, egotism, not to mention homophobia, racism, and all those glorious human traits just as prevalent, despite his newest tool.
Oh, I forgot. The grand evolution is slated to happen next week.