Twittter as Triumph of Humanity

Ms. Arianna Huffington, before her scheduled speech at Royce Hall, declared that:

"Twitter is not a triumph of tech; it's a triumph of humanity."

On the contrary, to online endless reporting has merely demonstrated the fickle and illusory nature of public opinion, the transience of humanity in the face of changing and collecting information, much of which is irrelevant, immaterial, or just plain inaccurate.

What the world needs know , more than every, is accuracy, certainty, verity. These elements have been sorely missing from popular political discourse for some time. Now that Presidents, dignitaries, and movie stars share their latest notions about the issues which trend from hour to hour, we have less reason to esteem the opinions of another merely becaus of power or popularity. Who can forget the snap judgments of Ashton Kutcher about Penn State's Joe Paterno following the sex abuse scandal that exploded in the football program. Within hours of his tweet defending the famous football coach of questionable integrity, Kutcher received a deluge of condemnation from followers, enough that he cancelled his Twitter account.

This slip of the account reveals two pressing issues: one, that massive follow-up of news commentary hangs to easily on the facile opinions of individuals who are not knowledgeable of current events. Also, Twitter followers are spending more time hounding the missteps and mistakes of cursory commentators when they should be pondering the values and views in their own lives, the ones which they would like to champion and promote.

Instead of creating critical thinkers and engaged activists, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media seem to be creating a following of media-lemmings who take in whatever they can find, whatever will give them a buzz, or a momentary humanitarian high, then fall off and go after some other piece of information.

Twitter can be used for good. Immediate updates relating to national policy may have some value for certain people. On the other hands, immediate media technologies like Twitter merely underscore the worst of the herd mentality, one which jumps on the next craze or newest gossip with little thought or consideration. This is merely more of the same, not a "triumph of humanity."