After last week’s twitter debate / flamewar? between Reps. John Culberson and Tim Ryan, I’ve been amused by some of the reactions I’ve seen, as a fairly recently converted twitter user.

I should first point out that when twitter was suggested to me by Gab, of Sunlight, I offhandedly mocked it, signed up, and then didn’t use it, until I started to see people around me using it, and realized there might be something worthwhile going on there.

I expect that this is a similar twitter trajectory, where people sign up, probably often in the middle of 2007, twitter something like “twitter is weird, eating lunch”, only to leave an inactive account for 8 months, until suddenly the thing just seemed relevant (at least for me). After reluctantly giving it a shot, I’ve discovered there’s something very useful, productive, comfortable, and human about twittering.

The reason I bring this up is that some criticism of lawmakers using twitter sounds very much like the conception of bloggers as weird narcissistic intoverts, perhaps Gen-X’s version of the cat-hoarding ex-hippie. While many bloggers are weird (I did most government-related work i pajamas before starting at Sunlight, where I don’t wear pajamas), such attempts at categorizing ultimately speak more of the categorizers conceptions than of the reality of the medium.

I just saw this video (semi-not safe for work) linked from twitter, which was pretty funny, but sort of missed its mark. The description seems better matched to the culture of adolescents with text messages, which is rather different than the broadcast microblogging that is more characteristic of twitter.

I think this is going to happen every time something interesting happens on twitter. First there will be praise, probably linked from twitter, followed by halfhearted ironic mocking of the supposed narcissism of the short sentence. The mocking will probably be a projection of the non-twitter user’s fears about the medium, or a misunderstanding of its prevalent uses based on the “what are you doing now” entreaty twitter users face on their twitter pages (if they even use the web-based part of the service). Just as Twitter’s ultimate societal worth is different from its original design, twitter criticism tends to reflect confusion about what the system does, and what it’s like to actually do.

The platform is perfect for the blackberry culture on the Hill, twittering from the floor is OK to do, and it’s really exciting. When John Culberson says:

• @timryan I am glad we are having this high tech debate Tim – what is your source for this factoid? It is far too small to be believable 09:17 PM June 12, 2008 from web

That’s actual direct discourse, happening completely in public, from the House floor, with only the 140 character restriction to go against. No stump speeches fit in that space, only quips, rejoinders, factoids, and single line justifications. This is great exciting stuff: they’re talking about whether Alaska (ANWR) drilling for oil would lower prices more than $.02 over 20 years. It’s a quick fact to make a point, and it was called into question, and it has yet to be resolved. Can Tim Ryan back it up? Will John Culberson go check it out, to be sure he isn’t wrong about the benefits of opening a Nature Reserve to Oil drilling?

I don’t know if they’ll come back to it, but this is real debate, and the fact that the system was built to work with text messages (must be under 140 characters) doesn’t mean we can denigrate its users because the sentences can’t be very long. Ever heard of poetry?

How about a one word twitter with a big consequence: arrested.

Who knows how long twitter will hold many of our attention, or how much societal heft will be processed through it. Either way, it’s a step toward unmediated discourse that isn’t just bottom-up design, it’s almost entirely missing a Top. I’m not bemoaning the inconsistent twitter access, but pointing out that these conversations and observations on twitter are entirely divorced of context, they’re blog posts without the log part. It’s almost prayer-like, releasing some sense into the aether, often without a clear recipient, to either mark events or to share simple human pleasantries (my friends often describe their meals; something everyone happily agrees on). They’re often the things one would like to point out, but aren’t ever given the context, so up it goes, saved from the lonely death of the unshared observation, instead released into the very public, very programmable world of the twitterverse. A witty sentence, link, joke, meal, or a toes-in-the-sand experience.

When the ultimate digital clearinghouse for random public thoughts starts being used in earnest by the ultimate legal clearinghouse for matters of legal and societal import, you can be sure I’m going to be paying attention. When meaningful dialog happens between congress members on twitter, then we’re all on the house floor.