[LINK] USDAFoodSafety is using Twitter.

[Tom Worthington]

At 03:23 PM 30/03/2009, grove at zeta.org.au wrote:
>... I wonder if there is a name for people who are full on tech 
>users, that disavow these shiny, intricate baubles that flash, 
>twitter and beep? ...

What I find curious is that technologies like Twitter and SMS are 
relatively primitive, taking us back to the days of short text-only 
messages, with no fonts, images, audio or video. Apart from having 
lower case text, there is not a lot of advancement between a telegram 
a hundred years ago 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy#Electrical_telegraphs>, 
Telex from 70 years ago 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy#Telex> and Twitter/SMS. The 
clever part of the technology is in the social engineering, not the 
telecommunications engineering.

Similarly the key technology at BarCamp Canberra 2 was not Twitter, 
but post it notes used to prepare the schedule of speakers and the 
social expectations which made this fluid format work. We could have 
dispensed with the Internet, computers, smart phone and video 
projectors and the event would have worked just as well, or perhaps better.

Similarly, I expect that what USDA Food Safety need to get Twitter to 
work and a set of understood rules on how to use it and what for.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University