I have only been on Twitter for a few months, and I admit, at first I didn't get it.  I saw ooshiny 's "tweets" reposting on her blog, so I went to the page, and I still didn't get it.  A blog in a few lines?  Why?  But then, as I continued to read her (clever) microposts, some of them coming from the middle of the day, giving me a quiet, oddly intriguing picture into her daily life, I began to see the appeal. Still, I didn't join, because while it was amusing, I still didn't see why I should do it, too.

I remember the man who was arrested in some Middle Eastern country and got out because he tweeted "arrested" right before they incarcerated him, and his friends and family mobilized and got him out.  I thought, okay, there it's valuable, and if I'm ever overseas in a country where I could potentially be arrested for almost nothing (apparently now, this includes photographing buildings in England, so, duly noted), then I'll get Twitter.  But even though I still didn't join, I kept thinking of how amazing that technology was, that with that text he could so quickly change the power balance in his situation.

When I finally joined Twitter, it was because I wanted to follow @TheFix's tweets of one of the Presidential debates.  I had to get an account to join, and so I did.  To my surprise, many of my friends were on as well, and I ended up "watching" the debate with Chris Cilliza, Caryle, Kim, Jess, Michele, and other people I didn't even know yet.  And the more I tweeted, the more fun I had.  So I kept going, and going, and then nanowrimo came, and I tweeted through that, and then I kept tweeting, and then I dragged Dan along, too, and I was hooked for good.

But it wasn't until the mob scene that was #amazonfail that I really saw Twitter work for me.  I wasn't arrested in a Middle Eastern country, no.  But I did witness, in the span of a few hours, a major "glitch" appear in a very, very powerful company, a glitch which made it clear that, whether the discriminatory filter was intentional or accidental, it was easy to manipulate in an invisible manner, and as the matter wore on, it became clear it was difficult to undo. Through the Twitter hashtag, I found realtime information (and wild, insane rumor), leaks, and, finally, some few press reports.  I discovered how far the issue reached.  I saw how far back it had gone.  And, my favorite part, I saw how many people took censorship very seriously.

Most traditional media outlets don't seem to know what to do with Twitter.  Some seem to have figured out how to wade in, and some like The Des Moines Register have embraced it wholeheartedly, but overall, the media seems to view Twitter as some bastard cousin of blogging, which was bad enough already.  Where are the facts, they cry?  Where's the research?  Where's the reporting?  It's just a bunch of mad people shouting!  It's like the people pontificating and barking on blogs, only concentrated and full of hysteria!  Well, the problem is that everything they complain about Twitter and blogs are true--everything but the just.

( Read more... )

And it's a link, to a blog from my new favorite bookstore.  Vromans says:

By now, you’ve probably heard all you care to hear about Amazon’s incredibly stupid decision to “de-list” books with adult content (and especially books with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes and subject matter).  You’ve readthe excellent blog posts, the well-written letters to Jeff Bezos, followed along on Twitter and the retorts by independent booksellers.  You’re probably about ready to turn the page on that whole mess and continue with your life.

Don’t.

This is more important than that, and now is the perfect time to think about whether you want to trust one company to dominate the book market, or any market, for that matter.  The benefit of having  a rich, diverse ecosystem of vendors and suppliers has never been more obvious:  many sources of information equals choice, and choice equals freedom.  It’s actually your freedom that’s at stake here, and putting things back the way they were, fixing the notorious “glitch,” won’t change that.  Because your freedom was at stake long before this recent de-listing experiment. Anytime you limit yourself to fewer suppliers, especially of something as vital as information (and if you purchase a Kindle, you’re effectively doing just that, limiting yourself to a single information provider), you’re putting yourself at the mercy of that provider.

Amazon.com isn't bad.  But they are too powerful.  And that has to stop.

 An amazon.com employee broke company code and anonymously spoke to Seattlepi, one assumes because he/she has more of a sense of how damaged amazon.com is than its own PR department.

Excerpt:

Thousands of people were angry that gay-themed books had disappeared from Amazon's sales rankings and search algorithms. The number of Tweets on Sunday afternoon that had the term "AmazonFail" surpassed even those with the words "Easter" or "Jesus."

By this time, Amazon.com had upgraded the problem to Sev-1. (Amazon.com breaks down its operational issues in terms of severity levels. Sev-3 means a problem affects a single user. Sev-2 is a problem that affects a company, or a lot of people. Sev-1 is reserved for the most critical operational issues and often are sent up the management chain to the senior vice president level.)

"People got pulled away from their Easter thing when this whole thing broke," the employee said. "It was just a screwup."

If this is true, (which I actually believe could very well be it) the fail is quickly becoming a two-fer: on the one hand, how messed up is this system that one clumsy fumble in France can cause damage that takes two days to undo, and on another, how absolutely fucked up is amazon.com that they didn't say this Sunday afternoon.  Or, if they felt that was to revealing, why didn't they come out to the press in some vague but apologetic manner or at least in some gesture that said they cared that their reputation was going into the toilet?  Clearly the answer is, because they don't want to.  And this, even now, is not from amazon.com.  This is an anonymous tip from someone who, in the grand hierarchy, is somewhere between flunkie and semi-flunkie.

This is the system with which we have entrusted a large section of the publishing world.  This is the company who controls what we read and if our works are seen.

This needs to change really, really, really damn fast.

 

 Right, so today is another day, etc, etc.  The myriad drugs gave me a decent night's sleep, and I'm somewhat pain-free-ish this morning, and my head is almost clear.  So I'm going to give myself my own personal nanowrimo sort of day to work.  There's a lot to do here, and Anna is home, so this is the plan.

1.  Write for thirty minutes, with timer.  
2.  Gather, sort, and start laundry.
3. Check in with Anna.
4.  Write again.
5.  Shower and go pick up CD at library.
6.  Probably food about then.  More Anna. And laundry.
7.  Writing again.

This is a rough draft of the day, not a script, but I want to keep on this back and forth, trying to wade my way in.  By this evening I want to be in a good enough groove that I can close the door for a few hours and just slide way in.  The kick is I don't know yet to what.  I did a tarot trying to decide between SL and STB, and SL came up, surprisingly.  I like this better, because i wanted to finish that before I returned to STB, but we'll see.

I will report back on how things go.  The goal for the day is to get back in the writing gig and to put a bit of shape back into the house/housework.  Neither Dan nor Anna care about the house, but there's always a correlation to my state of mind and my environment.  The goal by Monday is that I have re-managed pain, restarted writing, and launched into a full-on spring clean of the house, which will take two weeks.  Part of my problem the past couple of weeks has been that I am listless.  I function better busy. So busy I will be.