The speed of sound....
An example of how things have changed in my lifetime.
When I was young, pre-college age, in the evenings when I was done with homework and some running around outside, I watched TV and thereby caught the local newscast. We also got newspapers, both the local and whichever one Dad was working for as a pressman. So I read papers and watched TV for my news.
When I went to college, I didn't have time to watch TV. My first year at school was a desert of not seeing anything at all. My second year at school is when the web was rolled out, and although it was slow to grow, that was how I started to get my news.
Shortly after graduating, we got TV again, but couldn't sustain it for long - money was too tight, so much as we liked watching things we had to budget it out. But by then, the web was very robust so I could read just about anything I wanted. And as time marched on, and RSS feeds became common, things became even easier to follow.
Then twitter happened, and I finally joined up just to stop missing all the, "Hey, I'm going to X who wants to hang out/have a party?" messages. But after a bit I found it was even more important for finding out what was going on around the globe, as events happened in real time.
Last night we finished game on campus and I updated my feed at 10:15pm. I got about 130 new messages, about average for me for a 5 hour gap. I started reading and finished up when we were almost home - about 10:45pm. I hit reload again, and imagine my surprise to find my half-hour gap was ALMOST 200 MESSAGES. I said wtf and started reading, and that's how I heard about the announcement from the White House, and ALL the messages talking about it and making observations and going on and on....
(Side note - I told Marc his RSS political feeds were going to be exploded, and I was right. Whee.)
Shortly before going to bed I updated again, and found almost another 200 messages waiting, and read through those too before hitting the hay. Today I can leisurely go through my websites and see who said what, where, but last night late in the night, it was twitter that broke the news for me.
I love the future.
When I was young, pre-college age, in the evenings when I was done with homework and some running around outside, I watched TV and thereby caught the local newscast. We also got newspapers, both the local and whichever one Dad was working for as a pressman. So I read papers and watched TV for my news.
When I went to college, I didn't have time to watch TV. My first year at school was a desert of not seeing anything at all. My second year at school is when the web was rolled out, and although it was slow to grow, that was how I started to get my news.
Shortly after graduating, we got TV again, but couldn't sustain it for long - money was too tight, so much as we liked watching things we had to budget it out. But by then, the web was very robust so I could read just about anything I wanted. And as time marched on, and RSS feeds became common, things became even easier to follow.
Then twitter happened, and I finally joined up just to stop missing all the, "Hey, I'm going to X who wants to hang out/have a party?" messages. But after a bit I found it was even more important for finding out what was going on around the globe, as events happened in real time.
Last night we finished game on campus and I updated my feed at 10:15pm. I got about 130 new messages, about average for me for a 5 hour gap. I started reading and finished up when we were almost home - about 10:45pm. I hit reload again, and imagine my surprise to find my half-hour gap was ALMOST 200 MESSAGES. I said wtf and started reading, and that's how I heard about the announcement from the White House, and ALL the messages talking about it and making observations and going on and on....
(Side note - I told Marc his RSS political feeds were going to be exploded, and I was right. Whee.)
Shortly before going to bed I updated again, and found almost another 200 messages waiting, and read through those too before hitting the hay. Today I can leisurely go through my websites and see who said what, where, but last night late in the night, it was twitter that broke the news for me.
I love the future.