david carr twitter

So why wasn’t my laptop open?

A half-hour later, a steward approached me and said he wondered if I would be more comfortable with a seat in the bulkhead. Nearly a year in, I’ve come to understand that the real value of the service is listening to a wired collective voice.Not that long ago, I was at a conference at Yale and looked at the sea of open laptops in the seats in front of me. That may sound like a MySpace waiting to happen — remember MySpace? And beyond following specific individuals, Twitter hash tags allow you to go deep into interests and obsession: The act of publishing on Twitter is so friction-free — a few keystrokes and hit send — that you can forget that others are out there listening. I have found transcendent tacos at a car wash in San Antonio, rediscovered a brand of reporter’s notepad I adore, uncovered sources for stories, all just by typing a query into Twitter.All those riches do not come at zero cost: If you think e-mail and surfing can make time disappear, wait until you get ahold of Twitter, or more likely, it gets ahold of you. Because I follow people on Twitter who serve as my Web-crawling proxies, each of them tweeting links that I could examine and read on a Blackberry.

As someone who was oversubscribed on Facebook, overwhelmed by the computer-generated RSS feeds of news that came flying at me, and swamped by incoming e-mail messages, the last thing I wanted was one more Web-borne intrusion into my life.In the pantheon of digital nomenclature — brands within a sector of the economy that grew so fast that all the sensible names were quickly taken — it would be hard to come up with a noun more trite than Twitter. A Patent Pending People Search Process. I may have quite a few followers, but that doesn’t make me Moses. Yes, I worry about my ability to think long thoughts — where was I, anyway?

We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. The best people on Twitter communicate with economy and precision, with each element — links, hash tags and comments — freighted with meaning.

There is always something more interesting on Twitter than whatever you happen to be working on.But in the right circumstance, Twitter can flex some big muscles.

Think of last weekend, a heavy travel period marked by a terrorist incident on Friday. “It will be hard to wait out Twitter because it is lightweight, endlessly useful and gets better as more people use it. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Professional acquaintances whom I find insufferable on every other platform suddenly become interesting within the confines of Twitter.Twitter is incredibly customizable, with little of the social expectations that go with Facebook.

We are reprinting it today in honor of David Carr’s life and untimely death yesterday, February 13, 2015. As news outlets were scrambling to understand the implications for travelers on Saturday morning, Twitter began lighting up with reports of new security initiatives, including one from It was far from the whole story and getting ahead of the news by some hours would seem like no big deal, but imagine you or someone you loved was flying later that same day: Twitter might seem very useful.Twitter’s growing informational hegemony is not assured. Twitter can tell you what kind of netbook you should buy for your wife for Christmas — thanks Twitter! 682.7k Followers, 241 Following, 561 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Derek Carr (@derekcarrqb)

On Twitter, anyone may follow anyone, but there is very little expectation of reciprocity. And this being the Web, many smart folks are plotting ways to turn Twitter into so much pixilated mist. Much of what I need to know is in that cup: if it looks like Apple is going to demo its new tablet, or Amazon sold more Kindles than actual books at Christmas, or the final vote in the Senate gets locked in on health care, I almost always learn about it first on Twitter.The expressive limits of a kind of narrative developed from text messages, with less space to digress or explain than this sentence, has significant upsides.

And just in case the noun is not sufficiently indicting, the verb, “to tweet” is even more embarrassing.Beyond the dippy lingo, the idea that something intelligent, something worthy of mindshare, might occur in the space of 140 characters — Twitter’s parameters were set by what would fit in a text message on a phone — seems unlikely.But it was clear that at the conference, the primary news platform was Twitter, with real-time annotation of the panels on stage and critical updates about what was happening elsewhere at a very hectic convention. By carefully curating the people you follow, Twitter becomes an always-on data stream from really bright people in their respective fields, whose tweets are often full of links to incredibly vital, timely information.The most frequent objection to Twitter is a predictable one: “I don’t need to know someone is eating a donut right now.” But if that someone is a serious user of Twitter, she or he might actually be eating the curmudgeon’s lunch, racing ahead with a clear, up-to-the-second picture of an increasingly connected, busy world. Brands are using it, institutions are using it, and it is becoming a place where a lot of important conversations are being held.”Twitter helps define what is important by what Mr. Shirky has called “algorithmic authority,” meaning that if all kinds of people are pointing at the same thing at the same instant, it must be a pretty big deal.Beyond the throbbing networked intelligence, there is the possibility of practical magic. By continuing to use our site, you consent to the placement of cookies on your browser and agree to the terms of our Privacy Policy. 25.3k Followers, 503 Following, 145 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Follower of Jesus Christ (@davidcarr8)

There is plenty of nonsense — “Anything that is useful to both dissidents in Iran and Martha Stewart has a lot going for it; Twitter has more raw capability for users than anything since e-mail,” said Clay Shirky, who wrote “Here Comes Everybody,” a book about social media. But I don’t think so. The service has obvious utility for a journalist, but no matter what business you are in, imagine knowing what the thought leaders in your industry were reading and considering.