During the first year of Twitter, we talked about the inevitable emergence of competing attention frameworks: #Egosphere vs. #Cognosphere. Personalities more inclined to use this technology to feed the ego, versus those who would use it to feed, augment, and extend the mind.
The emergence of Twitter Jumbotrons is like a second or third order derivative of the egosphere. At it’s core, Twitter coaxes many people into feeling as if hundreds, thousands, or millions are listening and hanging on our every word. People aren’t, even in the millions-of-followers category, but it can feel that way.
What’s amusing is that these vain hopes — born of a deep cultural starvation for positive recognition, affirmation — are further amplified in this context. The Jumbotwittertron beckons that YOUR fleeting thought “may be being seen by tens of thousands of people” and that people should therefore employ even more of their already scarce attention into “brainstorming” the composition of that fleeting tweet.
Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame has dwindled to less than 15 seconds. There are deeply provocative implications to all this, but we’ll need to save that for another time because I’ve already pressed the boundaries of average attention available for thoughts like this one. I’m grateful for the investment.Clipped from http://www.mediabistro.comKaty Perry (@Katy Perry) is using her Twitter fame in her offline life now, too: she’s bringing out giant “Twitter jumbotrons” during her live concerts to display tweets and twitpics from her fans to get them amped up about the show. So if you’ve got tickets to see Perry any time soon, start brainstorming an ultra-witty tweet or two – they just might be seen by tens of thousands of people.
Perry’s California Dreams 2011 will be the first live concert tour to feature Twitter this prominently. Each show will have its own unique hashtag that fans can add to their tweets, and those selected will appear on the massive on-stage screens before the show starts.Read more at http://www.mediabistro.com