The Perils of Twittering

Alan Jacobs (The New Atlantis) on the perils of twittering during a public address:

So when you set up a Twitter stream to project as a speaker is speaking, and invite people to participate in it[!!!], you are simply asking them to fail, miserably, to understand what the speaker is saying. If a speaker makes a point that you find dubious, are you going to wait to see if later stages in the argument clarify that point, or perhaps make it more plausible? You are not. You are going to tweet your immediate reaction and therefore simply miss the next stage in the speaker’s argument. Every tweet you write, and every tweet you read on the big screen, compromises still further your comprehension of the lecture. I bet that after the talk was over there weren’t a dozen people in that audience who could have given even a minimally competent summary of what [the speaker] said.

A perfectly obvious disaster simply waiting to happen. And at an internet-conference, no less.

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Still the best anti-Twitter rant, bar none.