Micro-blogging via Twitter (and status updates on Facebook) seems to represent the new fad in communication. Being able to declare your thoughts to the world -- without engaging the brain to process your thinking -- appears to be gaining favour with politicians, musicians, and need I add, academics! Communicating in bite sized thought-summaries is not new however. SMS and pager messages have already been around for some time, and the ability to communicate using short messages had already caught on before Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey launched Twitter in 2006. Perhaps, the most interesting aspect of this can be found at Wikileaks -- a "multi-jurisdictional organization to protect internal dissidents, whistleblowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing." On November 25 this year, Wikileaks released half a million US national text pager intercepts, covering the 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington. Here's an example. The archives represent a catalogue of electronic and human "chatter" at a remarkable point in world history. Messages range from texts between machines, humans and machines and multiple humans -- from a variety of providers -- Metrocall, Skytel, Weblink_B etc. Perhaps, some historian in the future will trawl through this archive and try to better interpret it's contents. Could the analysis of Twitter and other micro-blogging sites, after a particular event in history (earthquakes, sporting events, elections etc), provide an insight that is often not available with "processed" news stories available through branded publications and media? Perhaps, an intelligent analysis of such feeds would provide real insights into what happened?
image from www.change.org
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