But it just occurred to me what Twitter is like. Remember how back when I was a callow youth in library school I'd log into my online classroom, and there would be a section of the screen that displayed the instructor's slides, or the student presentation, or whatever?
And then there'd be this other section of the screen for chat, so people could type in their comments and questions?
We'd get these conversations going in the chat section, commenting on something the presenter had said, offering some tangential thought, making jokes, adding random observations about unrelated things.
There was this sort of sub-class going on, related to but not completely following the formal presentation. I used to compare it to passing notes in an offline classroom, assuming you passed the note to everyone in class (including the professor).
Well, Twitter is like that! At least, it's like that when you have a bunch of people posting about some shared event. We're all passing notes about whatever's going on, or else about unrelated things we happen to be thinking about, but all within some general context.
I guess when there's no unifying event that everyone's sort of 'gathered around' to make a general context, it's more like posting notes on the bulletin board in an empty classroom, and having people wander by to read them and possibly respond, or not.
But at least potentially, Twitter is classroom chat for the world. Wow, that sounds impressive.
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