A little bit more then 140 characters

140 characters or less, that’s how many words you get to express yourself on twitter. When I heard about this idea, this product I was skeptical, in fact I still am. But It also got me thinking one hundred and forty characters… Shakespeare said brevity is the soul of whit. Yet I can’t help thinking we’ve stumbled across something evil here. Is it another step down the disposable society road? Yes of course but it also (can be) a fluid instantaneous expression.

140 characters:

140 characters or less, that’s how many words you get to express yourself on twitter. When I heard about this idea, I was skeptical, in fact I still am. But It

That’s 140 characters.

I’m a person who (generally) trusts my first assessment. Read Blink by Malcom Gladwell for more on this idea which he calls rapid cognition.

It’s an interesting thought; we’ve come to trust our own powers of reasoning so much that we forget something, our frontal lobe is young, it is still in the testing stages of its evolution. It hasn’t proven if it has staying power (please see “The Arrogance of Humanism” by David W. Ehrenfeld).

You could also argue that we’ve come so far as a society that’s we’ve gone (not literally) backwards. Our ability to communicate has been refined to how we can best communicate in short quick bursts. It makes my head hurt.

It has great potential, it can do this:

Allah O Akbar!

Andrew Sullivan writes this about it:

That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.

It's increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and the old guard mullahs were caught off-guard by this technology and how it helped galvanize the opposition movement in the last few weeks. That's why they didn't see what those of us surgically attached to modems could spot a mile away: something was happening in Iran. If Drum is right , the mullahs believed their own propaganda about victory until reality hit them so hard so fast, they miscalculated badly and over-reached.

The key force behind this is the next generation, the Millennials, who elected Obama in America and may oust Ahmadinejad in Iran. They want freedom; they are sick of lies; they enjoy life and know hope.

This generation will determine if the world can avoid the apocalypse that will come if the fear-ridden establishments continue to dominate global politics, motivated by terror, armed with nukes, and playing old but now far too dangerous games. This generation will not bypass existing institutions and methods: look at the record turnout in Iran and the massive mobilization of the young and minority vote in the US. But they will use technology to displace old modes and orders. Maybe this revolt will be crushed. But even if it is, the genie has escaped this Islamist bottle.

Maybe that's what we're hearing on the rooftops of Tehran: the sound of the next revolution

Allah O Akbar!
Shema Israel!
Viva La Revolution!