Last week, the Library of Congress announced that it will save all the public tweets from the day Twitter was created until the end of time....Or just until the end of social networks if that moment ever happens!
As surprising and unexpected as it sounds, this piece of news is really serious and deserves our full attention as users of Twitter and people involved in social media. I think this new initiative tells a lot on how public opinion is starting to consider social media in a way it never did. The 140 characters messages from millions of anonymous people along with celebrities will go in the archives of the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, becoming a part of “the universal body of human knowledge.”
As meaningful that step is on a historical angle, it is only legitimate to ask ourselves if all of this makes sense.
As surprising and unexpected as it sounds, this piece of news is really serious and deserves our full attention as users of Twitter and people involved in social media. I think this new initiative tells a lot on how public opinion is starting to consider social media in a way it never did. The 140 characters messages from millions of anonymous people along with celebrities will go in the archives of the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, becoming a part of “the universal body of human knowledge.”
As meaningful that step is on a historical angle, it is only legitimate to ask ourselves if all of this makes sense.
Are we being watched ?
It's probably human instinct to think that an institution interested in saving people's personal data is plotting something. The first thing I told myself when I heard the news was "Just another way to limitate privacy and freedom of speech". But I actually think my reaction was naive. It's one thing to be paranoid about companies or government trying to get information about people. But when it comes to a cultural entity like this one, I think we can let our guard down for once. After all, you can always choose to make your tweets private, like I do.
Are we making Twistory?
After reassuring myself on the privacy issue, I started to wonder if Twitter was really worth saving. Do people's tweets on personal doings or ordinary actions reveal something about our society or are we giving Twitter way more attention than it deserves ? It may sound weird to care about John Doe's personal feelings on random subjects, but it actually is a part of history to some extend. “This is an entirely new addition to the historical record, the second-by-second history of ordinary people,” said Fred R. Shapiro, associate librarian and lecturer at the Yale Law School. I have to agree, because if we wouldn't have kept letters or diaries written centuries ago, many traditions or social characteristics of certain times would have been ignored.
So in the end, I think this is a great initiative. I don't know if the tweets will help our grand-grandchildren to understand our society better, but at least, it shows that we care about knowledge of human kind.
Though one more realistic question remains:
Why did the Library of Congress and Twitter decided to team up? Is it only for culture's sake, or is there something more behind? This decision serves a lot of interests, as Twitter gains credibility and the Library of Congress makes one step forward into the digital area.
What's YOUR opinion?
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