As Twitter continues to flounder as a business, many have tendered their advice for the struggling company. On the other hand, people at Twitter have responded by introducing what appear (to some) to be "innovations" that are already shared by multiple, social media . All this has prompted me to think about my own fascination with the platform. Even though I've blogged here many times about Twitter's relationship to physical and social space, I find myself most often thinking about Twitter's time effects. Like other social media, part of the allure of Twitter is the way it allows users to manipulate space--i.e., using social media to "be there" even when you're very far away. But time is also a resource that people manipulate through their social media. While some social media emphasize the present (or the "expanded present" ), other platforms allow for other, sometimes subtle, temporalities. This powerful combination of space an...
Occasional posts on anthropologically interesting science fiction, anthropological futures and my own future as an anthropologist.