Stay in kamae (Shizen tai no kamae)
I’ve been studying a martial art called To Shin Do. There is a concept called Shizen tai no kamae. This is where the teacher tells you to feel gravity. It can be while solving a problem (of violence) or just standing there walking around. Many of the things that are practiced start with this. This is kind of like the idea of zen. It is not really attainable for me, at least not consistently when moving around in the real world. The practical idea is to know when I feel it and get back to it as soon as I recognize that I’m no longer in kamae.
So, if we are studying a problem and doing a thing to solve the problem I will often feel that my solution is not right or could be better. The teacher will say, ‘show me.’ They will watch and they they will say, ‘ok stop.’ you are out of kamae, get back into kamae and feel gravity now keep doing hte thing. So, like zen, kamae is always there, always with me I just have to find it and keep recognizing when I have lost it so that I can find it again.
Knowledge spreads on the on the internet, it doesn’t need Twitter
Knowledge is like kamae. Its has always been there. Even before the internet and way before the internet. Communication has always been there. There are many ways for knowledge and information to spread on the internet. The internet doesn’t need Twitter, Twitter needs the internet. Yes, I know people have talked about how essential it is to some local, state and federal communication efforts in the US and for other countries that rely on it to disseminate realtime information. But here is the thing, there were mass communication channels before Twitter that worked and all of the vulnerabilities of those channels also affect Twitter. In addition, there are many, many services that are as good or better at real time communication that can also reach a broad audience around the world. The internet has always spread information, Twitter is only one such way and ot really only works for a small subset of the internets population. Mainly gen x and some older millennials, the current next generation in high school probably doesn’t even know that anything happened.
Nature abhors a vacuum
I studies biology for my first degree back in the 90’s and eco systems are fascinating. Systems in general are fascinating. We have yet to build anything digital that is even close to the simplest ecosystem. An ecosystem in the world is a complex thing with nuance and brutality and fragility and everything hangs in a finely tuned system that works with the players filling the roles it needs. Remove a player and a role gets unfulfilled. The system becomes unbalanced. Many things could happened but nature is beautifully resiliant in that it has a lot of redundancy and an large amount of cushion to absorb the excess of a lost role plyer. But it can’t absorb it forever. This is what I mean when I say nature abhors a vacuum. I am sure I heard or read that somewhere but I can’t remember where.
Generally what happens is that with the missing role player there is an opportunity. With opportunity comes competition for the role and a new player joins the system. So to is business and capitalism. Its not a matter if if, it is when Twitter goes away. Mayby during the World Cup, maybe next year, maybe in ten years when it just becomes irrelevant with society, it will go away. As a side note, why do you thing the Facebook and Google founders are so desperately searching for what comes after advertising?
When Twitter goes away something will fill the vacuum. Maybe something thats already out there can be adapted to fill its role or maybe someone will scratch their own itch and solve the problem in their own way with their own spin on the solution. Either way if you take anything, anything at all out of the internet or business ecosystem something will fill that void. That is just the nature of life.
Life Will Find A Way
We all know that no matter what happens: war, natural disaster, scandal etc. The world keeps turning. Politics go on, boy do those loud mouthed people go on and on and on with their hypocritical soap boxes of the left and the right trying to justify the unjustifiable position of not doing their jobs. Yes, I am speaking of US politics here and both parties have horribly damaged the country and government in the last twenty-five years so much that they should all be locked up fired as incompetent malcontents. But I digress. As an independent political think here, that is a much longer line of thought that I will someday explore.
Commerce goes on. People need to buy food and go to work and pay for their kids to grow and play sports. Professional sports still go on and all of the tings that stem from that apparel, game tickets, betting and fantasy. People will still talk about it, pontificate about it and there are plenty of channels for conversations around that to fill the gap in the short term. Podcasts, YouTube, websites - do you remember what those are? People will talk ad they will find a way. There may be some friction for some demographics at first but they will find a way through the first real time event with what is still there and as in nature, something will fill the void, if Twitter going away even is a void.
Next Gen
The next generation has already moved on, if you are looking for something to connect with, look to them. They are already connected in real time with their peers. Connect with them, learn from them and share what you have learned, both the good and the bad. But be true to yourself about what is good and what is bad about Twitter and social media in general. Look into the mirror and be honest to yourself about the types of people who create these types of companies. They are not creating them for improving the social fabric of our societies. It is ok to build a business to make money but please, lets not pretend that a micro blogging site with advertising as a genius invention of our time. Lets not pretend that (poorly) managing a company takes any special skill set that anyone with 5-10 years of experience or an MBA could not do.
Second, the technology common across the platforms that these social types of companies is neither novel nor is it difficult to build. Lets be honest here, the difficulty with social media is in the operations. The difficulty lies in scaling out the services and supporting the human aspects - the content moderation and the enforcement and nuance of human legality across arbitrary lines on a map. And let me be very clear here. To me it is obvious at this point that Elon Musk is neither a genius when it comes to empathy nor is he at all educated or experienced in the sociology that is required to understand the policy and process needed to dance with the regulators and lawyers of the many different nation states that technology and sociology intersects with in the broader world. It is very clear that he is out of touch with the next generation. They communicate on a different level and with different tools. And no amount of money will change that. I wonder if thats what scares him and Zuckerburg so much - they are finding out that they can’t buy their way to relevance with the next generation and they know that their business model is not sustainable across generations.
Finally, ask yourself this. What benefit do communities derive from these types of utilities? Is it connection? Is it communication? Why are they so ripe for misuse and abuse, not just by the bad actors but by the misinformed and the uninformed who unwittingly propagate bullshit with a mindless tap. Who needs bots when you have a horde of mindless, unthinking, uninterested humans willing to regurgitate anything a few famous people tell them to. That is a deeper people that local communities and national communities and the earth community needs to solve if it is to survive beyond our solar system.ese types of services
Don’t fight for what is already gone
The more you take the more you need The more you suck the more you bleed
Puscifer (Telling Ghosts)
If you spend your time wishing, wanting and fighting for the way things were you will miss the beauty in the opportunities that have blossomed right before your eyes. The tighter your grasp is on what has already past you by the more you miss out on what is right in front of you now. Try the Marie Kondo approach to your digital life. Thank the old Twitter for what it brought to your life and ten let it go. It will never be the same. It is already obvious that the discourse is even more caustic and that the tech bros who idolize Musks way of communicating without civility will become the norm. Who needs that kind of experience or culture? So in the immortal words of Queen Elsa, Let It Go. Gravitate towards better experiences. They are out there. The time and energy put towards defending and arguing the merits while fighting for something that is already gone are resources you cannot get back. Save yourself the time and energy and invest in the future.
