{"id":533,"date":"2009-04-21T14:47:21","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T19:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.codedread.com\/archives\/2009\/04\/21\/the-web-apocalypse-were-already-in-it\/"},"modified":"2009-04-21T14:47:21","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T19:47:21","slug":"the-web-apocalypse-were-already-in-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/archives\/2009\/04\/21\/the-web-apocalypse-were-already-in-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Web Apocalypse: We’re Already In It"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/object>Shelley makes the assertion<\/a> that we are never going to bother with our Twitter past. When I read that, I initially agreed with her: Twitter is a fast-moving medium for short messages whose value fade as time marches on. So in general I won't need to go back and retrieve them. Then today happened and I realized that it's not because we won't want to - it's because it's going to become impossible.<\/p>\n

I'm a big fan of Alexis'<\/a> When-Can-I-Use<\/a> site. I liked it so much that I asked him<\/a> to let me link directly to when a specific feature will be usable. He obliged. Here is an example of when SVG will be usable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I then started using that enough that I became mildly annoyed that the options take up so much space that people wouldn't understand that I was linking to without scrolling the web page. So I asked Alexis to provide a setting in the URL to hide all those options. He humored me again and implemented my suggestion. He even provided an example link. The problem was that this part of the conversation happened on Twitter.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I used this feature a couple times and it worked great. Now it's months later: I have forgotten the option and failed to write it down or bookmark it or ... That was clearly my fault. The fact that Alexis didn't make that option discoverable on his site is another problem (but it is his prerogative).<\/p>\n

Snap forward to today and I read Mark's latest excuse to drop a few F-bombs<\/a>. I wanted to provide him with that option in the URL so people could get his point (that @font-face<\/a> is almost ready to be widely used on the web).<\/p>\n

I toyed with the idea of just sending Alexis an email to send me the details of that option, but that's just too slow these days - plus the information is out there! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I ended up seeking Alexis' Twitter profile<\/a>, then going back in time (several pages, I might add). Because it was a tiny URL I almost missed it. Thankfully some surrounding tweets gave me a clue of the context. Here is his tweet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I'm still convinced that talking at 140 characters a time is just the wrong way to communicate. Throw in the fact that I don't really own that data (it's in someone else's database). Throw in the fact that Twitter is notoriously unreliable. Throw in short URL services. Throw in the fact that threaded conversations are only sometimes<\/em> navigatable and in only one direction. Throw in the fact that you can't even tell what message Fyrd is replying to because he used Netvibes. Throw in the fact that the conversation is not searchable like it would be using email, IRC logs, or blog conversation. Why are we doing this again? We are doing it because everyone is doing it too and we don't want to miss out<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But we are not thinking about the longer term usefulness of that communication. Twitter is a very short-sighted way for us to be communicating in the 21st century. And these problems go FAR beyond the Short URL one. Yet because that's where the information is flowing, that's where people are going.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I'll take this as a lesson learned: If I find something important on Twitter, make sure I write it down somewhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shelley makes the assertion that we are never going to bother with our Twitter past. When I read that, I initially agreed with her: Twitter is a fast-moving medium for short messages whose value fade as time marches on. So in general I won’t need to go back and retrieve them. Then today happened and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,11,28],"tags":[151],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software","category-technology","category-web","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}