I have often been the first to stand up and defend technology. When faced with arguments for or against the online publications versus the extinction of traditional forms of newsprint, I will always side with advancement of technology. In the arena of litigious issues such as P2P, I will advocate education of technology rather than the wholesale banishment of it.

In the software industry, many of the debates will typically reduce to one question: just because we can do it, does that mean we should do it?

That is the difference between advancing technology, and hindering it. Essentially, technology allows us to do almost anything, but poor decisions often lead to numerous Frankenstein-like creations resulting in a bloodied trail of disenchanted and bitter practitioners awaiting the next round of beatings.

Six Degrees of Tweets from Ashton Kutcher

More than recently, the advent of “social media” and “social networking” has been sold to us beneath a campaign of brotherhood: a worldwide message of “making the world smaller” as though this were a good thing. There has been a global campaign, to create a need for a product that was not there before. What was the need for Twitter, in terms of our ordinary lives? Creating a demand for a product that otherwise had no other purpose or need. As I sit here with three mobile phones, two laptops and a 46″ TV, I can’t seem to help but think I’ve been here before.

Courtesy of Aaron Riddle @ acriddle.com

In fact, before all this social babble there was only SPAM: unsolicited information that ended up in our mailboxes about things that I didn’t want or care about. But SPAM was ugly and it didn’t have a cute, blue bird or Ashton Kutcher. SPAM became our enemy and tools surfaced like SPAM Assassin to kill it and legislations rose deeming it offensive.

How would companies reach us, now that SPAM was marked as an outcast and undesirable? Introducing SPAM’s better looking twin, Twitter.

Somehow, somewhere, before we could completely kill SPAM, Twitter convinced us all that it was in fact, desirable to have unsolicited information. However, it was no longer unsolicited because you could subscribe and unsubscribe to the SPAM.. oops, I mean “tweets”.

The issue is not that you can or cannot unsubscribe, the issue is that people are now convinced that they want this! To be inundated with information is suddenly in vogue and it now becomes some kind of sociological phenomenon (endorsed with bizarre CNN segments where they read users tweets out loud).

Somehow, the marketer’s message came full circle, and now they’ve created a need for all of this typically mundane information. We find ourselves wanting to know more and more useless things, spending hours clicking links, re-tweeting, and following the endless streams of consciousness around the world. They’ve successfully enlisted the help of millions to do what they would’ve had to do themselves.

Social Solidarity and Critical Awareness

What is the sociological impact of this mass hypnosis? Why do we feel that we need so much information? Why is there never enough? The answers to these questions will help us understand ourselves better and show us where we are headed, maybe alter our course. Is this a path that we even want to be on? Should we be doing this?

Social interaction now centers around what people are tweeting about and its a race to find something interesting enough to keep your attention for 140 characters or less. If you stood quietly for 5 minutes in a bar, the most common word you will hear is ‘tweet’. People have fallen into a lull — a sense of false consciousness.

Have we become so bored with our own lives that the stream of information on other people’s lives are the top items on the menu of discourse? With advanced tools like HootSuite, you can also schedule your tweets every few minutes so that they get a fresh burst of, now solicited, messages. This isn’t about sending periodic updates about a natural disaster in Thailand, this is about self-promotion; or a link to your blog, if not an RT of someone else’s RT of a blog article.

As with most things, you cannot blame the medium but only the lack of critical awareness. As Marx suggested, we need to stand outside society and through scientific critique we can understand and alter our historical position. Separate yourself from the glue of social solidarity and objectively consider what it is these companies are asking you to do and decide for yourself.

Becoming aware and finding the right use with the right medium is the answer. An example of social interaction would be MeetUp.com, a website that has enabled loners to meet other loners. Here, you find the best use of technology to make your world smaller where groups of people actually want to interact with each other in real life.

Of course, this is nothing new. In this age, a successful marketing campaign can win you the presidency so it should be no surprise how SPAM was able to make its return from its half-grave, tarred and blue-feathered. Perhaps one day, I will read a tweet that you just fell down and can’t get up. Or perhaps you’re appendix has just exploded and are in critical condition at the hospital. Bear in mind, they will likely need to sterilize your iPhone before they let you go under the knife.

What we need to do is to be aware of what is looming on the horizon if we allow this nonsense to continue unabated; without checks or absent of any critical thinking. Our aim should be to use Twitter to further our progress in both technology and society, and less to further the art of self-promotion.

Twitter can be a great vessel, and it can help others reach those that would otherwise be unreachable. With no ulterior motives, we can take this medium and use it to lower the costs of helping those in need (as with natural disasters). It can reach millions instantly with a simple message that brings education to the uneducated. It can grow a network of unbounded numbers of people gathered for a noble cause and show strength in numbers. That is the greater purpose that lays ahead of us.