Generational Fear Gap

Lenora's final presentation today was eye-opening for me. I had an epiphany.

Older people think I'm really good at technology. I'm not. I'm just not afraid of it like many of them are.

For example, my last boss and I started Twitter accounts at the same time. Neither one of us had any clue what we were doing, but he just assumed that because I was a twenty-something, I would "get" it and then could teach him. I was fighting off questions about what makes a "good" tweet, how to use a hashtag, and what the heck all the @s were.

Because he was worried about all this stuff, my boss wouldn't try anything. His Twitter account sat stagnant while mine started somehow gaining followers. The difference was that I just tried stuff to see what worked. My strategy with digital writing -- any writing really -- is just to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

I think this is a common theme between the generations. Older people that didn't grow up with ridiculous amount of technology are afraid they'll "mess it up" or "break" it, but my generation knows that it can always be wiped and started over.

Twitter as a Discussion Board

It's funny how many of my digital writing classmates's final presentations have featured Twitter. Before this past summer I had only the vaguest ideas about how Twitter was supposed to work, and now I have enough knowledge about it to find myself able to debate about its use in our class and its potential use in future classes.

Marc's comments about live-tweeting a class particularly got me thinking about Twitter and its implications. He suggested that there be one class period held completely on Twitter, with no face-to-face meeting. I think that idea is interesting, but a little overwhelming. I don't like sitting and reading Twitter for long periods of time, and find discussions on the site are often hard to follow. The occasional lag between a point and people's reactions often causes confusion because other comments get thrown in and it's hard to follow who is talking about what.

But it would still be interesting to see, if only to get a feel for how Twitter functions as an actual discussion tool.

Live-Tweeting -- Does It Have to Be New?

Even though I use it fairly regularly, I still don't 100% "get" Twitter. Of course, I don't think anyone really does. It's too new and different from everything else.

Something that I'm currently struggling with is the concept of live-tweeting, something that was explored by my classmates Ryan and Ranee during Writing for the Digital Age.  I get that it's tweeting about something in real time, but I'm having trouble putting it into practice.

Let me give you my example.

I'm currently playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. For those of you who don't know, I'm very late to the party on this, because the game came out a long time ago. Nevertheless, I'm currently playing it and I'd like to tweet about my reactions to it in real time, but I'm wondering if that's incorrect Twitter etiquette.

Is it ok to live-tweet something that isn't current to the world at large if it's current to me? This is not a rhetorical question -- please give me your thoughts/opinions/suggestions in the comments section!

To My Class

Dear Writing in the Digital Age Class,

You all are the best.

Ever since my presentation on Thursday, I have been receiving lots of tweets and some blogs about yarn, knitting, and social interaction. I haven't gotten the chance to catch up on everybody's blogs yet (my bridal shower was this weekend), but know that I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say.

Thank you for being so attentive during my presentation and humoring my unhealthy passion for yarn-y things. I'm sure I came across like the Helvetica guys in the video we watched, but hey, passion is a good thing.

And thank you all for your tweets. Each and every one that has been sent my way has made me really happy. I'm so glad our class is together.

Love,
Autumn