I like Twitter. It's another easy way to get to know what's happening in other people's heads, what they're reading, what they think is interesting. And I get to share those things with the world too: special events, what I think is important, what I want to share with people. And it certainly doesn't hurt to be in the middle of all those swirling ideas and communications. I may even get a new idea myself one day! lol

But one twitter related phenomenon disturbs me: over-following. I guess all tools get taken into the realm of spam, misuse, commercialization, et cetera, but when supposedly "real" people using Twitter are following literally thousands of feeds... I mean, what do they think the "following" function is for? Well, maybe I've got it wrong. I think it's to read the tweets of those whose opinion you respect or are interested in in some way, those feeds that are going to inform you of something like an institution's upcoming events. You're populating a list of things to theoretically read. You may skip a few but the idea is to read a good portion of them. But when someone's following 2747 Twitter feeds, what good is that? Unless these are all very rare Tweeters, that's a lot of material even to ignore regularly.

The first thing that I think when I see that is that they are playing some sort of game. "I really need a lot of followers so I'm going to follow others so they feel like they should follow me!" I'm following 25 right now and I even consider weeding out a few now and then.

Again, maybe I'm all turned around on this. Maybe there's some Twitter tool (Twool? Gawd, I've gone over to the dark side. lol) that helps weed through the piles of Tweets that must build up. Anyone know anything about this? Hmmm...

Labels: aboutCommunication, aboutEthics, aboutHumanNature, aboutInformation, aboutOnlineTools, aboutProductivity, aboutReading, aboutReason, aboutSociety, aboutTechnology, aboutWeb2.0

There was a recent article in the Library Journal about the dismissal of the head of the public library system in Lexington, Kentucky. Without much information, which is kind of the point of this article, it's hard to really take sides but there are two points that jump out at me when discussing something like this.

Firstly, the CEO makes some pretty strongly negative claims about the behaviour of the local newspaper and their role in all this. As I've said before, I've never been too impressed with most "professional" journalists. They seem more interested in selling papers than disseminating information. Honestly, if it comes down to a librarian's word versus a journalist's word, all else being held equal, I'd have to pick the side of the librarian, despite my obvious bias.

Also, one of the criticisms of the article and the CEO is that she was fired with no explanation. What on earth is that? What kind of open and transparent government runs things like that (rhetorical question, thank you)? I've always thought that very few, at least in an official sense and regarding important issues, decisions should be made without a specified and sufficient reason. Voting? You should have to write at least a couple paragraphs as to why you think this party or this candidate is better than the other(s). Government decisions? Whole reports could be provided explaining the reasoning and the consideration of other possibilities and options. Ethical beliefs? Well, its certainly got to include something more than, "it seems like the right thing to do." Without some clarification of our actions that will affect others to a meaningful degree, we're just animals (which is exactly what we are but nonetheless), which is not what we WANT to be. We seem to like to consider ourselves somewhat more advanced, somewhat more conscious, somewhat more enlightened. Setting aside any arguments as to whether we are or not, we should at least act like what we want to appear as.

What do you think? Am I being too hard on journalism? And should we really be held to account for our actions in some "literal" way?

[ From Lexington PL CEO Imhoff Fired; Threatens Suit, Criticizes Newspaper Coverage by Norman Oder at Library Journal ]

Labels: aboutEvents, aboutHumanNature, aboutInformation, aboutLibrarianship, aboutReason, aboutWork