Karl Klockars

I did a quick web search for “twitter revolution” and it returned about 89,000 results.  I wish I had had the forethought to do that a couple days ago when I was proclaiming an open pool at work for who would call the recent action in Iran the “twitter revolution” and when.  As it turns out, a bunch of people are calling it that, and not unreasonably.

After poking Google with a stick a few times, I’ve gotten the results down to an under-10k number for the last week or so, and I’d imagine that a vast majority of those results are in the last half week.  (Based on the fact that the elections were just 5 days ago and people as a mass movement only picked up on the Twitter thing in the past 3 or so.  Rough guesstimate, but my numbers are just as likely as yours.)

Based on this, I’d say the self-congratulatory title to all this is a little shortsighted, but hey, I beat everyone else to the punch at the world-famous news and information media center that sees fit to employ me.  (And further extraction:  Even if I didn’t, I sure as hell was the first one to open my damn fool mouth about it.  “Twitter revolution.  He thinks he’s so quick!”)

So does this mean that we have to stop talking shit about Twitter now?

Interestingly enough, I doubt that nearly as many people considered the political effects of the fax machine before Tienanmen blew up 20 years ago – but no one was poking fun at the technology nearly as much.  I understand that Twitter has a horribly stupid and goofy name, and the code-language is just another series of symbols to push, but guess what – it’s been a lot more effective politically than the unconnected net of self-important bloggery in this country.

For all the idiotic things that one could convey in just 140 characters, I find it more interesting all of the interesting things that come through the technology.  I find it fascinating that it’s more mobilizing than the technology that allows us to type as much as we want, whenever we want, including photos and videos and polls and forums and flashing glittery images.  How is this possible?

Could it be another example of art/communication thriving within its limitations.  Could it be a glaring example of why editing is such a lost skill – and that it’s possible to get a point across in nearly nothing at all?  For example, were I to “tweet” this (and no matter how much I use twitter, I can’t help but feel stupid when talking about it), I’d probably be forced to say something like this:

Power of Twitter: Art thrives in its limitations.  How can 140 chars. mobilize and move a nation to protest?  (And are we fat and lazy?)

In fact, I used my little in-browser Twitterfox whatchamahoozits to count the characters for me.  Just one little way this technology is better than the WordPress program I copied/pasted into.  When I was in grade school, I struggled like hell over the idea of “theme” in English class.  I kept mixing it up with plot and the like – but Twitter is one but “theme” experiment, mixed in with announcements that one is at the grocery store and then going to lunch.  You take the good with the bad.

I sit here looking at the info about the #iranelection (for those of you playing at home, those are called “hash tags”) and I’m told that almost a billion little messages have been sent about about this whole situation.  No way to tell how many of us bloggity-types have written something about it, is there?

In many ways, only a technology like Twitter could have formented something like this.  It’s a network that’s not easily controlled, and can be accessed from pretty much anyone’s pocket.  It puts the power of mass communication into something the size of a deck of cards, and the past few days have proven that you don’t need more than 140 characters at a time to do something.  From 2002-2008 we had as many characters as we wanted over here, and we still ended up in two wars and re-electing a Bush.  So much for change via that communication method.  Maybe we’d have been better with fax machines.

I’m not convinced we’d be able to do anything over here along the same lines – but maybe I’d be surprised if a popular candidate were to ever show up in Chicago with a name other than “Daley,” and an election were held in which they lost.  That’s the only way I’d see anything happening, and that would have to be matched with a certain level of city control over communications – and the only communications they control are their own urges to speak out against what remains of The Machine.  Not likely.

But it would be interesting to see.

Would Chicagoans join together at Daley plaza sporting green scarves and throwing rocks?  Would cops start firing indiscriminately and journalists be kicked out, leaving us firebrands left with but one mobile-media option left? Would scandal erupt over shady election results and questions of vote fraud?  Would accusations of electioneering abound and riots against an oppressive political structure arise?

In Chicago? Heh.

I’d like to think we’d do something, but I’d imagine we’d collectively shrug and go back to the political thumb-twiddling we’ve been doing for decades.  Perhaps my next tech accomplishment will be called “Twiddler” where millions will have 140 characters to not care about much at all.