Twitter Emergent Behavior

I am beginning work on twitter & self-organizing systems/emergent behavior. My first document is a list of relevant definitions compiled from Wikipedia and other sources. A work in progress it is the kernal of my working glossary.

I think that in the end emergent behavior and consciousness will be a function of brute force computing power. Once there is enough working RAM and there are enough nodes with content a gradual awakening will occur.

The Collective Consciousness of Twitter

The term "collective consciousness" has a long history in social theory and has gained some common usage but I am particularly interested in its use pertaining to Twitter. When I was in high school around 1990 I read a book by Marvin Minsky titled The Society of Mind which describes a theory of human intelligence. About that same time there was talk of an "information superhighway" that would be built upon something called the Internet. I put these concepts together along with some other ideas from science fiction and projected that this new thing would become a giant thinking "brain" that would eventually develop its own behaviors and come up with ideas on its own. In other words I thought the internet would develop its own consciuosness. Well back in 1990 I figured that by the year 2000 this would surely have already come about. Now I think I may be lucky if I ever see it happen within my own lifetime. But make no mistake, I think it is happening and I think Twitter is currently the leading edge. I'm still very excited about this, in fact I'm probably more excited than ever. I am going to continue to blog about this concept and I am going to promote it on Twitter. This is one reason I have decided to take a break from my Twitter habit to further develop this idea. When I do finally get back to Twittering on a regular basis I will have an additional focus.

Twitter, AOL & Me Online

Since quitting Twitter I have been thinking and reflecting about what it meant to me and how I am going to replace it as an expressive outlet. I have concluded that I will resume Twitter at sometime in the future but it will be different. Defining my political positions in great detail and building a polemic framework are important and Twitter has been very useful for that. If I approach it more methodically and have my arguments better organized it may be more satisfying on the second go round.

I am tempted to tell my entire online life's story here on this blog and I may eventually get to that. I do now have enough history to identify patterns and how one medium like Twitter can at first intrigue, enthrall, and obsess me for a while only to turn frustrating and unsatisfying. The four month Twitter experience is so much like a compressed version of my six year experience on AOL that I absolutely must explore the parallels. My early AOL experience was as a naïve and curious teenager in 1993. Among other experiments I engaged in some blatantly sexual and exhibitionist behavior and while I managed to quickly supress that aspect outwardly I think there is such a subliminal thread occasionally running through my online presence to this day.

I am going to make an outline and index of all my andilinks tweets and begin a plan for my next Twitter round. It probably won't begin until I'm well settled in my new home, I'd guess around September 1. I will record many of my musings about this here on this blog.

Finished with Twitter

I will not be deleting my account because a situation may arise where I will want to make posts but the mode I had been following over the past several months is finished. I was spending too much time for too little return.

I do appreciate my followers and I want you to know that I will miss those of you who interacted with me from time to time. I will likely be visiting the financial blogs posted on the andilinks home page and will be posting comments on those blogs.