The answer, sadly (I think), is no. According to Twitter, the algorithm doesn't look for popular topics over time, but instead prefers what's popular now. So no matter how funny it is to jokingly say, "That's soooo five minutes ago," Twitter is making it true.
People have already argued since the beginning of mass media, from the radio to the television to the internet that it is killing the attention span of each new generation of technology natives. The length of a sound bite in news reports began falling as early as the 1970s, and media watchdogs have bemoaned the death of investigative journalism for decades now because it requires long-term attention from both journalists and audiences. And when you're finished reading this post, you can spend hours and hours reading jokes, playing games, and generally bouncing from site to site.
For a blog post about short attention span, I've sure jumped around a lot, so here's my point: Our culture is becoming more vapid, and it has nothing to do with "Jersey Shore." We are no longer expected to have the attention span to delve deep into why one political opinion is more truthful than another or why one computer brand is more suitable for some people than others. We rely on name-calling, catch phrases, and hashtags to tell us what to think. We need to slow down, explore positions, and plan for the future. When we think of Twitter trends, we ought to think of long-term effects of deep social issues, not something silly that we'll all forget about in three days.
Twitter is a helpful tool, and it's a lot of fun. But we have to expect more of ourselves if we want our future to be filled with novels, trips to the moon, and deep political discourse instead of hashtags about what we ate for lunch.
No comments:
Post a Comment