Twitter as ball-point pen

Even the online, architectural wunderkammer that is BLDGBLOG is jumping in in defense of Twitter these days. Here, Geoff Manaugh comments on an obvious technological transition that Twitter has wrought:

First, on the most obvious level, Twitter needs to be differentiated from what people write on Twitter. The fact that so many people now use Twitter as a public email system, or as a way to instant-message their friends in front of other people, is immaterial; Twitter is a note-taking technology, end of story. You take short-form notes with it, limited to 140 characters.

Second, the comparison I often make here is with ball-point pens. Imagine a world where everyone uses typewriters: they write novels, manifestos, historical surveys, and so on, but they do it all using typewriters. Now the ball-point pen comes along. People use it to write down grocery lists and street addresses and recipes and love notes. What is this awful new technology? the literary users of typewriters say. Ball-point pens are the death of humanism.

I like the idea of Twitter as "note-taking" technology. When I'm taking notes on a lecture, or jotting down ideas onto the Post-it notes that clutter my desk, I feel constrained. But never once have I wished for a bigger Post-it note or a lightning fast hand. I know the limits of these "technologies," and gladly work within them because they make things easier. The reasoning behind Tweets may derive from a different source--shortened links to this blog, inquiries to a vast general public, comments to other users throughout the community--but the notion of conciseness and brevity lure in the same qualities as writing down a phone number or address on the cover of a magazine that is lying on your coffee table.