“Twitter Marks an Advance in Freedom”

Michael Giberson

“Twitter marks an advance in freedom,” or at least so says Peder Zane in his column at the Raliegh News & Observer. I wouldn’t know, since I still don’t drink from the fountain of tweets. Only, I happened to notice at the end of an essay by Amartya Sen in the New York Review of Books (“Capitalism beyond the Crises,” recommended reading by the way), that the Review offers readers the opportunity to “follow us on Twitter” or “become a fan of the Review on Facebook.”

I’m trying to imaging New York Review of Books-style articles reduced to 140-characters.  Sen’s 4,000+ word article becomes:

Keynes not all. Adam Smith relevant. not dogmatic. Moral Sentiments.
Pigou. markets and capitalism and gov healthcare good for europe, us 2.

Or maybe the NYRofB tweets more of the mundane day-to-day world of publishing, not article summaries:

no room for rosenblatt essay this issue. word came from on high.
editor relieved.

But whatever the Review is doing in Twitterville, doesn’t the mere fact that it is there send a kind of signal to the uber-connected early adopters:

Establishment arrived. You move somewhere else now.

(HT to Arts & Letters Daily for both the Zane and Sen pieces.)