Twitter is, like, totes the new Myspace. Everybody’s using it. Your grandma, aunt Milly, that cute girl in your science class, John McCain. Thing is ubiquitous. You can’t escape it. So if you haven’t capitulated yet, now is the time. Pretty soon, we’ll all be communicating in 140 characters or less, haunted by dreams of that cutesy error message. “Not the whale. NOT THE WHALE!”
So you can follow Lil Wayne, and you can follow Shaquille O’Neil (seriously, do it. You will not be disappointed), and now you can follow Astro_Mike, a real live astronaut named Mike Massimino, currently a member of the space shuttle Atlantis crew, en route to the Hubble Space Telescope to make repairs. Yeah. That’s right. Tweeting from outer space.
hi-tech astronaut technologyCourtesy NASA
Last Tuesday afternoon, Massimino made history. Yeah, he entered the earth’s orbit, and that’s pretty cool, or whatever, but more importantly, he sent an 139-character post to his Twitter account, the site’s first extraterrestrial activity. Well, maybe. I mean, Dennis Kucinich does have an account (cue rimshot). Thanks, folks, I’ll be here all summer.
I can hear you now: “Okay, Elana, that’s great and all, but why should I care?” Well, my dudes, the answer to that question is twofold. First off, you can read material straight from the mouth (or fingers) of a real person in Earth’s orbit. That is pretty awesome. Astro_Mike ’s Twitter is a record of the day-to-day life of an astronaut. Secondly, I think this story speaks pretty strongly to the power of the internet and social networking devices to learn and link the entire universe (literally!) together. Or maybe not. What do you think?
I heard someone griping on NPR this weekend that "...in a single generation, we've gone from 'One small step for [a] man' to 'Launch was awesome!!'"
But... launch probably was awesome.
Totes.
I am old and don't get the NOT THE WHALE reference. I hate being old.
Twitter is just plain stupid! None of my friends use the twitter...because, in reality they think its dumb 2... i mean, who cares about what you are doing every second of every day, of every week.. if you are bored enuf to be on twitter, that just means you need to get a life!!!
I'm with you on that! I can't keep up on all the important stuff, let alone all the unimportant stuff.
Technology. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done.
Au contraire. I mean, Yoko Ono? Haikus? Twitter? If I believed in destiny... A match made in heaven.
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