Twitter 6th sense

This is a great Wired article for all those twitter naysayers who complain that 0ne line "tweets" can never tell a full story about someone's life. These same folks don't see the need for a play-by-play of everyday life. But it's not in the individual tweets, but all of them as a whole that creates what the article calls "social proprioception:"

They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.

Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination. For example, when I meet Misha for lunch after not having seen her for a month, I already know the wireframe outline of her life: She was nervous about last week's big presentation, got stuck in a rare spring snowstorm, and became addicted to salt bagels.

So why has Twitter been so misunderstood? Because it's experiential. Scrolling through random Twitter messages can't explain the appeal. You have to do it — and, more important, do it with friends. (Monitoring the lives of total strangers is fun but doesn't have the same addictive effect.) ... It's practically collectivist — you're creating a shared understanding larger than yourself.

And now...a shameless plug to gain social proprioception into my world.