The Fast Company blog recent posted, Twitterbursts: It’s Not About The Tools; It’s All About The Tools by Marcia Conner of Pistachio Consulting (aka @marciamarcia on Twitter). I always appreciate getting the history of communication channels, especially when there is a cognitive twist thrown in. In a past life I was a cognitive psychologist who studied how media effects cognition. The series of posts, History of Knowledge Management in Six Parts, took on a similar task which I originally called, Knowledge Management is an Emerging Field with a Long History.
Marcia notes that meaning is bigger than words. The more you know someone, the fewer words you need to convey meaning. In fact, very young children learn meaning before words and often invent their own words before they learn their parent’s language. I was told I had about 50 variations on ugh, each with its own meaning. Parents who pay close attention learn this vocabulary and provide validation to their children that helps with their language acquisition.
The best new tools enhance existing means of communication and this is what Twitter does. As Marcia writes, “You have been microsharing and networking since you first asked to be carried and your toys were made of wood.” What is new with Twitter messages “is how they help us do it (forcing compactness and distributing to portable devices) and who we share with (often previous strangers who share our passions).”
While the best new tools enhance existing means of communication, they also bring new capabilities as Marcia notes. We need to learn how to best use these capabilities. We generally start with the past. The phonetic alphabet first recorded oral poetry before it went on to take advantage of the capabilities text offered (See Eric Havelock’s Origins of Western Literacy). I think we are still discovering what micro-messaging can provide. Marcia writes that it can, “amplify voices and net people-picked answers fast… even update our collaboration capacity; improving our mindfulness by encouraging us to ask ourselves consistently, “Is this something I should share?”
This is all true but I wonder what else is in store. The inventors of the alphabet did not imagine War and Peace or the precise sharing of scientific information through journals. The ability to enhance random access in books took over 1500 years and it appears people did not know they could read in silence for about that long. Now I am not equating Twitter with the invention of the alphabet but the alphabet offers an extreme example of what a new media can bring. I kidded Marcia about her ability to engage in Twitter speak at the Enterprise 2.0 conference but I also admired it as both a skill and an example of how new media can effect the way we think and sharpen our communication abilities.
Comments