Twitter As An Architectural Environment

Where are you when you spend all that time at the keyboard? Supposedly you are sitting in your chair but I have a hunch that you are somewhere else completely. Not unlike reading a book, Twitter is creating a world for you, that is not in the physical world. However, unlike a book, other people are in there with you, which means that you are being engaged in your imagination. This is a fairly sizeable leap of perception. Yet we are so used to being in our imagined realm that we hardly notice any distinction and overlook the difference.

Clearly we are at the beginning of Twitters history and technological advances. As much as I am a Twitter junkie and fanatic I have to say that the interface is very disappointing and limiting. I cannot really engage with people I meet all over the world because I am really in a glorified chat room. Being able to engage in other peoples ideas keeps me coming but I cannot actually engage them.

A number of years ago, "Second Life" had a brief surge in popularity and then promptly fizzled. The idea of  "Second Life" was that you as a person, had a digital avatar, that could enter into cyberspace and participate in digital environments. The avatars were simple and cartoon like and consequently were not that appealing. The environments were slow and complicated and difficult to use. However, from my architectural viewpoint the whole idea was exceedingly fascinating.

I can see that Twitter has power much beyond Facebook because it draws like minded people together as opposed to like people. There is a whole world out there that I didn't know existed and they didn't know mine. At some point there will be a requirement for people to meet in cyberspace to share ideas. There will be the opportunity to create environments, unlimited by any laws of physics, that we can explore. At some point they will mesh with our physical realms as part of our daily experience and Twitter and other social medias will have their own architectural environments. Welcome to the Twitterscape!