Twitter has allowed me to access and explore ideas that have never previously been on my radar or that I've glossed over because of the effort required to seek out more information.
An example to illustrate my point:
Through one of the people I follow, I came upon an article about antimatter. Before twitter it would never even have occurred to me to search for these types of articles. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-fundamental-matter-antimatter-symmetry.html I now follow a number of physicists, astrophysicists and mathematicians because I find their work interesting.
The article makes a reference to pitch and how pitch changes as an object making a sound approaches and passes. Think of an ambulance siren. Right away a blog post of another person I follow - the amazing Matt Henderson (@matthen2) came to mind. Matt is also someone I found through twitter. He's a computational linguist about to begin his PhD at Cambridge. Matt creates animations of mathematical concepts and is one of my favourite people to follow because he helps me understand my world. He not only makes math and physics easy to understand, but his work is stunningly beautiful. http://blog.matthen.com/archive
The post in question was created a few months previously. It was an animation of the Doppler effect and has stayed with me. When I went to Matt's blog to search for it, I couldn't find it so I DM'd (sent a direct message) to Matt via twitter asking for the link. Within an hour I had it.
http://blog.matthen.com/post/5521271088/spin-around-something-which-makes-a-noise-and-you
Matt's tweets and blog entries have led me to people whose epaths would never have crossed with mine had it not been for twitter. Twitter is not like Google. With Google, you need to already know what you are searching for. Twitter allows for randomness. It is much like wandering through a section of a library that you do not normally visit and finding a book on a topic you know very little about. The book captures your interest and keeps you reading into the wee hours of the morning. The difference? With a library you must then go back and find more books on the topic - a pleasurable pursuit. With twitter though, you can simply click on the hashtag or examine someone's follow lists and find a vast array of people and ideas related to the topic.
Thank you Twitter. You've made my life richer.
An example to illustrate my point:
Through one of the people I follow, I came upon an article about antimatter. Before twitter it would never even have occurred to me to search for these types of articles. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-fundamental-matter-antimatter-symmetry.html I now follow a number of physicists, astrophysicists and mathematicians because I find their work interesting.
The article makes a reference to pitch and how pitch changes as an object making a sound approaches and passes. Think of an ambulance siren. Right away a blog post of another person I follow - the amazing Matt Henderson (@matthen2) came to mind. Matt is also someone I found through twitter. He's a computational linguist about to begin his PhD at Cambridge. Matt creates animations of mathematical concepts and is one of my favourite people to follow because he helps me understand my world. He not only makes math and physics easy to understand, but his work is stunningly beautiful. http://blog.matthen.com/archive
The post in question was created a few months previously. It was an animation of the Doppler effect and has stayed with me. When I went to Matt's blog to search for it, I couldn't find it so I DM'd (sent a direct message) to Matt via twitter asking for the link. Within an hour I had it.
http://blog.matthen.com/post/5521271088/spin-around-something-which-makes-a-noise-and-you
Matt's tweets and blog entries have led me to people whose epaths would never have crossed with mine had it not been for twitter. Twitter is not like Google. With Google, you need to already know what you are searching for. Twitter allows for randomness. It is much like wandering through a section of a library that you do not normally visit and finding a book on a topic you know very little about. The book captures your interest and keeps you reading into the wee hours of the morning. The difference? With a library you must then go back and find more books on the topic - a pleasurable pursuit. With twitter though, you can simply click on the hashtag or examine someone's follow lists and find a vast array of people and ideas related to the topic.
Thank you Twitter. You've made my life richer.
Good explanation of what makes Twitter great! And thanks a lot for your nice comments about me! Am flattered :)
ReplyDeleteWell deserved Matt!
ReplyDeleteHi Heidi,
ReplyDeleteYou're spot on re both Twitter & that @matthen2 chappie (whoever HE is).
There's a very eclectic (dare I say "catholic") mix of subjects and views available via Twitter.
Said @matthen2 has a very wide range of interests, an insatiable desire to learn and an equivalent capacity to dissect, extrapolate & disseminate to others via that very same Twitter thingy.
And one more thing, no matter how much you laud him he never sits on his Stans & never needs to go buy a bigger hat.
:-)
@siabost9deas :D
ReplyDeleteIt appears that @matthen2 has more than 1 fan. :)
ReplyDelete