I was an early Twitter adopter– #26603, in fact—and quickly became an enthusiastic supporter of the service as a place to connect with my peers and colleagues. It wasn’t long before hearing someone say “I don’t like Twitter” based on the content made no more sense to me than saying “I don’t like blogs”… in both cases the technology is just a medium for creation, connection, and conversation. Find the right group for any (or better, all) of those three, and Twitter, like blogs, are glorious, dynamic places. Casually drop in on conversations, skim the words of a bunch of people one doesn’t know, or randomly attempt to connect, and they are horrid wastes of time. One may was well say “I don’t like books” or “I don’t like words” because so many of each are terrible.
That being said, a few days ago I nuked my longstanding Twitter account, summarily dropping the 300+ people I followed and the 1100+ people that followed me. And it feels good (this is where my friend Jen can say “I told you so.”) Twitter doesn’t provide any easy way to scratch and rebuild one’s network, which is what I feel compelled to do in light of my changing interests. And even if it did, I don’t know that keeping the username would have been useful.
For at least a year now I’ve become disenchanted and disillusioned with the bigger picture of education and technology. Increasingly, I find myself feeling as if I’m looking through the wrong end of the telescope, my vision narrowed down to a tiny circle. It’s time for me to leave those conversations and battles to my betters, those who are smarter and/or stronger and/or more ambitious than I am. Pressing the button that irrevocably deleted my Twitter account was both frightening and cathartic. Frightening because I severed a primary connection to many fantastic people I’ve come to know and work with… in many cases in no small part thanks to Twitter. I hope I don’t lose (too many of) those friendships. But the deletion was cathartic because the community that supported and sustained me had become, as of late, a kind of weight around my neck, preventing me from looking up in the direction I need to go, and too often shining a bright light on my growing dissonance and contrast with a world I no longer fit in.
The final push I needed to make this long-contemplated decision were the reactions from my community to Larry Sanger’s Educause essay on “Individual Knowledge in the Information Age,” readings which ranged from simply uncharitable to the ideologically-driven, with a healthy dose of willful misreading and cherry-picking added into the mix. It’s not that Sanger is 100% correct or that many of his points aren’t arguable… it’s how forcefully those readings demonstrated to me that I am completely out of step with that community. @fncll was the first casualty… this site may be next. I think I’m finally coming to a point where I’m comfortable merging the two parts of myself—the artist/creator and the technologically-inclined—that have become increasingly (and increasingly painfully) disconnected. The split has always felt artificial—but as of late it has become soul-killing. I’m not sure where my newly-fused, newly-whole self will find its home online. Maybe here. Maybe Cosmopoetica. Maybe somewhere else entirely.
I still exist on Twitter as @cosmopoetica, where I tweet about writing, art, music, literature, publishing, copyright, and whatever else suits my creative fancy. Technology and education topics will surely come into play there, but only as they pertain to these core activities and interests. Technology and education—and most assuredly “ed tech”—as such simply don’t interest or engage me anymore. And that’s a good thing.
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Hi Chris – I imagine you would like Jaron Lanier’s text – some strong similarities to the Sanger article in advocating for the individual, not only the “group”. The ideology of the socialmedia/web2.0/edutech crowd is becoming more pronounced, separated from reality, and, at the same time, more discomforting.
This is frequently evident in how quickly a complaint about Tool X is dismissed as lack of understanding by researchers. A similar discussion is now unfolding around multitasking. Apparently, it’s not what researchers and neuroscientists say about multitasking that’s important. Instead, it’s the view that surely there must be some benefit in all the fun stuff we are doing – a cheque to cash in the future.
I’ll miss your contributions on Twitter, Chris – critical voices should be amplified, not silenced.
George
Chris,
I know this is going to sound crazy, and it is the last thing you want to hear right now, but I have to say. You’re the poet of this space, the metaphors all around the emerging forms of communication, lack, desire, and excitement are not about edtech per se, they are about a ense of being there –writing from within the beast. I often get the sense you want to escape that beast in order to return to writing, but I can’t help but think you have been doing your art all along, in fact that is how I see it from where I am. This is not to say you shouldn’t renounce edtech or twitter or anything else you don’t want to do—though like George I will miss your voice in that space dearly—but I do know for certain you have been building and sharpeneing the metaphors in edtech I have need to make sense of so much fo this stuff. You are framing a form of poetry, linguistically foregrounding the meaning of so many amorphous (and amorous) spaces and connections. I was one of those people who said twitter (or microblogging was stupid) but I read a post by you that actually made me stop and reconsider. What’s more, back in November of 2006 you wrote this in one of the earliest posts I know of in my edtech circle about twitter:
My point is simple, and maybe even wrong, your poetry and edtech are far more connected than you think, and rather than fighting that fact or killing yourself over the sense of guilt for being neither, it is time to take seriously your role as the poet of this space, because it desperately needs one and you’ve been that for me all along, whether you recognize it or not.
All that said, you know this isn’t it for us, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
You’re with me no matter where you are, my friend.
I’m with Jen; I don’t care what handle you choose to speak from, just keep the voice going. “Immeasurable” is how I’d decribe what i learned from you. I don’t know anyone named “fncll” but I do like the guy named Chris.
I blanked my google reader account a while back. Not the same move, certainly, but similar. I feel the need every so often to start fresh, to get free of old things that bog me down. I’ve been feeling it again lately. I either need to change jobs or I’ll do something to rearrange my digital life. This kind of thing seems good to me. It can be painful at times but I usually get many good things out of this type of change. Maybe I’m just transposing my needs/motivations on to you but I wish you happiness either way.
I hope you don’t count me in the community you describe above. I’m off to read the Larry Sanger piece. To echo Cog’s words, I also didn’t recognise a username “fncll” (anymore than I would “cosmopoetica”, but if I see the name Chris Lott in there, I’ll know its worth a read.
it takes much more than an account deletion to sever a friendship.
hoping I wasn’t too albatrossy. if so, I apologize.
@fncll is dead. long live Chris Lott.
I don’t totally get it, and I know I’ll miss our exchanges in Twitter, but I also know you looked healthier and happier than I had ever seen you when we talked at Northern Voice, so if this is what you have to do in order to be happy, so be it. And which ever way you choose to go in the months and years to come, you know your my friend first, and a colleague second.
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