Twitter:
(via foresting)
Like UFOs and paranormal events, the orb phenomena is an example of how we can get so hung-up debating the “realness” of something that we miss what its appearance reveals to us about the evolving nature of our collective unconscious. I include myself in this tendency towards dualistic, right/wrong, true/false distinctions—despite all the things I’ve experienced that prove otherwise, it’s still all too easy to fall back upon the conventions of language and society and think of things as either real and rational or unreal and “crazy”. As such I was sceptical when I first heard about orbs—the mysterious white, semi-transparent balls that unexpectedly appear on digital photos. The accepted photographic explanation is that the orbs are appearing because of the decreased distance between the lens and the built-in flash of new, smaller cameras, which are thereby able to pick up the light reflecting off of sub-visible particles. There are others, however, who discount this theory and believe instead that the orbs are aliens, extraterrestrial spacecraft, ghosts, or some type of elemental being. They argue that existing scientific theories fail to explain all such appearances, citing the prevalence of orbs in photographs from certain locations, such as the ECETI ranch in southern Washington state near Mt. Adams.
While I found such theories interesting to read, the hype over them seemed like just another attempt of the New Age industry to cash in on what was most likely a trick of light. It wasn’t until I read Daniel Pinchbeck’s report about his experience at an orb conference in England that a new way of thinking about the phenomenon opened up to me. Daniel was less concerned with questions regarding the realness of the orbs, and more interested in what they meant sociologically. He pointed to the fact that orbs often appear in pictures in which a group of people are gathered and argued that their appearance may be projections of group consciousness being aware of itself as a group:
The Orbs Conference offered an eccentric collection of testimonies, channeling, scientific research and slide shows. My favorite take on the orbs came from William Bloom, a local mystic, who claims he has telepathic chats with the spheres. The orbs told him they work like “a cloud or a flock,” and visit us to “support group consciousness.” According to the orbs, “As we touch your individual psyches you begin consciously to experience yourselves as intimately connected with all other life forms on this planet and throughout the cosmos.” A physicist who connected two cameras to take simultaneous photographs found that orbs would only appear on one or the other camera. While he took this as evidence of their quantum subtlety, it could suggest spoof rather than proof.
In my talk on the orbs, I downplayed the question of the orbs’ authenticity to take a sociological approach. A postmodern phenomenon, the orbs only appeared in our world due to new technology, digital media, and social networks like Flickr, or blogs where people share orb images. As our evolving social technologies keep bringing us together in unexpected ways, Bloom’s transmission about “group consciousness” is thought provoking.
Daniel analyzed what he identified as a post-modern phenomenon using post-modern analytical tools: he wasn’t searching for an external validation of its reality, but instead attempted to reveal the context through which the orbs appear. I realized that a similar approach could be taken with UFOs and other phenomena—my inquiry didn’t have to fall on the side of deciding for science OR magic—rather, it could ride the psychological boundary between them. The information about orbs comes in the form of stories—which is how all information is shared—whether it’s supposed “hard” data reported by a scientist in a respected journal or the “unfounded” mystical thoughts on the blog of a (r)evolutionary author. I’ve realized it’s not the story itself, but the manner in which it is told that is the real meat of the matter. In the case of orbs, it’s not the little white balls themselves that are my focus, but what they reveal about a new, seemingly spontaneous method of telling stories via group consciousness. This post-post modern story telling resonates with the rise of self-organizing groups that use new social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to coordinate the efforts of “the many” without the need of a leader.
It is my belief that it is the awareness of our new abilities to act as organic groups that forms the basis for our next evolutionary leap as a species. The more we understand ourselves as being intricately and irreparably connected with everyone and everything, the more we will realize the true nature of reality as being nothing more than a consensual illusion—thereby doing away with questions of what is real and unreal altogether.
“SPIT IT OUT”
By: THEmeanMRmustard
In the same way that scientists can’t accurately measure the hyper-lightning movements of quantum particles, it is impossible for marketers to put a fixed value on the tweets that make up the millions of rushing, constantly changing Twitter streams. The movements of Tweets don’t follow a strict set of rules—and yet, like the particles, they aren’t completely chaotic either. Their worth can be understood according to context and probability—visible not as points or bars on a graph but as waves of undetermined length reaching out in multiple directions. When the send button is pressed, a tweet appears in many places at once (i.e. on individual feeds via various devices) and contains the possibility of being retweeted in many others. A tweet can simultaneously create new connections and dissemble old ones—it can both inspire and disgust, cause followers to be gained or lost. Instead of prescribing rules for how to tweet, it makes more sense to communicate the impossibility of prescribing rules, and instead encourage users to open up to the free flow of the streams—as opposed to clamping down extra-hard with filters and search tools.
The marketers and business people and so-called social media experts will point to this and that as the right and wrong way to Tweet—not realizing that the more exacting they try to be the more the TRUE essence of Twitter slips through their fingers—similar to another aspect of quantum physics called The Observer Effect—which refers to changes that the act of observation will make on the phenomenon being observed.
As long as Twitter continues to be conceptualized as an online version of the existing physical world, many users will miss out on its power as a tool for revealing the invisible interdependent connections between us all. (Remember: just because something is invisible or doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it isn’t real.) The particle-dance movements of tweets provide flashes of fractal multi-verses bursting forth like fireworks before fading just as fast. The goal should not be to freeze-frame and dissect it—but to enjoy its fleeting nature for what it is in a shared awareness of the beauty of NOW.
HEART BEARPOD SEEN IN VANCOUVER SKIES
If I disappeared tomorrow I’d leave behind the expansive, exhausting matrix of my internet wandering to the great search engine in the sky. On secret sites and password protected forums my future followers will attempt to prove or disprove my multiple identities and trade info on where to find authentic, TRUE bits and pieces as they revel in the eternally fleeting nature of my insight—the genius gift of Secret Rockstar Knowledge bestowed upon me by @hena, Goddess of cool hunting, who smiled on me from up in the clouds as I smoked the wild green grass and body surfed between the lyrics and the beat. She gave me the ability to drop critical pearls into the viral swineflu of the internets. Character limits in comment boxes and on Twitter were turned into creative catalysts—it was mind blowing to realize that the most complicated, impossible to explain things came across as succinct and well-put in140 characters or less. It was like taking a Polaroid of an architectural masterpiece. Auras of ghost light and other magical ephermera that get filtered out as mistakes by supposedly state of the art equipment are captured in a spur of the moment SNAP.
In the end, the art of living and the art of dying are all about the simple joy of pressing a button and pressing it NOW.
Here is one of my latest #FTW Shirts: “Cult Adds Life to Everything Nice”. These shirts are one-of-a-kind graffitied vintage shirts that I make especially for an individual based on the character they play on Twitter. Read more here.
“Getting” Twitter at the NYC 140 Characters Conference
(picture courtesy of Brian Solis)
The Twitter 140 Characters Conference in NYC this week was for, by and about those who “get” Twitter. There were many different types of people in attendance—from bonafide celebrities and prominent business leaders to music critics, marketers and unemployed artists/internet philosophers such as myself. Yet as varied as our individual bios might be we all represent a growing community of power-users: early adopters and next level thinkers united by our passion and enthusiasm for the possibilities created by a new way of communicating.
What’s interesting is that while “getting it” was referred to in nearly every panel and presentation, there seemed to be little consensus about what “getting” Twitter actually means. For some, it was about using Twitter primarily as a conversation tool. For others, “getting it” was about listening. For still others it was about “broadsharing”—a term coined by Vincent Hunt that I quite like—and the power of retweeted links. During the spirited and already infamous panel, “The Effects of Twitter on News Gathering”, Ann Curry claimed to “get” Twitter by embracing it as journalistic tool for finding out the factual truth, while Tim O’Reilly referred to it in his presentation as a way to create “ambient intimacy”. Throughout the two days there were many mentions of the need to be authentic while tweeting, with warnings given to those who attempted to Tweet in a disingenuous way for the purpose of selling things or self-promotion—yet there were also discussions about the fun of Tweeting as a made-up character and using the medium to create a rich fictional universe.
So what does it really mean to “get” Twitter? I think it’s simple—getting Twitter isn’t about using it in a specific “right” way. Getting Twitter means being aware of being a part of a large, interconnected flow made up of millions of smaller conversational streams. The garnering of this awareness is the real power of Twitter. It has the effect of doing away with the dualistic, either/or thinking that most of the world still runs on and expanding it to an either AND or. This is to say that while there are proven best practices about how to make the most of your Twitter experience, there’s also an inbuilt flexibility to the application that can’t be whittled down to a single set of rules or facts about how to use the service. The awareness of this flexibility can translate into real life lessons as well. In a world fixated on results and returns, Twitter is a reminder to stay loose, open and free in your thinking.
Instead of thinking of it as either/or I think of Twitter as being simultaneously a means for disruption and engagement. It’s a tool for amplifying valuable information and a squawk box of incessant inanities. It’s a platform for being “real” by discovering that there isn’t a single “real” you: Twitter teaches us that we are all a million different people from one day to the next, just like in that Verve song, “Bittersweet Symphony”. In fact, we’re a million different people from one tweet to the next—there’s the business me and the personal me, the relaxing, goofy me and the serious, impassioned debater. There’s no need to whittle these selves down on Twitter just like there’s no need to whittle them down in real life—what is needed, however, is the awareness that this multiplicity is the case, as being aware will allow for better implementation of the crowd of characters in each one of us.
This awareness should extend to the management of the various streams we each dip in and out of all day long. There is certainly a value to using tools such as Tweetdeck and the new and improved Peoplebrowsr to keep track of trends and people that are important to us, but I would argue that getting too wrapped up in mining Twitter for “meaningful” data will eventually result in losing the awareness of the Twitter flow that connects everyone and everything. A looser approach to Twitter will allow for the kinds of happy accidents and discoveries that enables one to move beyond their current sphere of influence. Twitter is about expanding your connections—not limiting them. It’s about sometimes going “off script” and embracing the mistakes that are often the result of powerful passions. As its creator Jack Dorsey said on Tuesday at the conference, “Expect the unexpected, and whenever possible BE the unexpected.”
Special thanks to Jeff Pulver for inviting me to be a part of this spectacular spectacular!
(posted with tweetshots.com)
This is a Tweet from @btl my MC alter-ego on Twitter. I actually told Jack Dorsey, inventor of Twitter, that when I first found out about Twitter I had the idea of putting out an anonymous poetry feed into the ether. While it turned out that I became a character instead, I still enjoy busting out the occasional rhyme on @btl
The graffiti artist Swoon and her crew are bum rushing the Venice Biennale this week on a boat assembled out of pieces of NYC trash. A part of me wishes they were crashing tomorrow’s 140conf instead…I’m also hoping Russell Simmons (@UncleRush) will show up after all. I’ve been tweeting into the wind hoping he’d answer. It felt like destiny when I imagined him at the conference—it seemed so RIGHT that one of the main innovators behind the cultural ascendancy of hip-hop should join the crew brainstorming the next level of the Twitter revolution.
This is not to say that the conference is not already super star-studded…last I heard a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model had joined the eclectic mix. I just always like the possibilities that open up when even the best parties get torn along the seams…I like the idea of fences being jumped and tickets discarded. Like Woodstock…that great event that’s a part of a story that’s been handed down from generation to generation of a revolution built on peace, love and happiness. A story about the people vs. the state, David vs. Goliath—the many vs. the few.
It was a story we were told had already ended—but in reality is only just setting sail…
us (twitter together time mix)
(note the infinity tat and ties)
I realized that due to their infinite nature, I’d been thinking of Twitter streams as being timeless—but this is not the case. Time matters on Twitter. Not all of the same people who are on early in the morning are on late at night. There are waves of users—one after another the continents wake up, drink coffee, go to work, go out, eat dinner, drink coffee, etc…
This doesn’t mean that the members of a Twitter stream are bound by geography or time zones—all that matters is that they are “on” at the same Twitter stream time—regardless if it’s real world quitting time for one and breakfast time for another. For instance, I know it’s getting near lunch when my west coast peeps start popping up, still sweetly half-asleep. We communicate on Twitter together (as an us) in a shared time that hovers over and in-between “real life” schedules.
Despite the fun of stretching out a Twitter conversation over many hours and many days (I’ve had extremely spirited exchanges with peeps in Australia that occur with over 12 hour intervals in between responses) there are also certain advantages to coordinating your Twitter time with the Twitter time of someone else. For instance, you’re free to “@” reply any public account on Twitter—even a famous person—and the reply will be waiting for them, which they may or may not read. But if you send the @ shout when you’re both online at the same time then there’s the chance that person might actually see your tweet flash across the screen and feel moved to engage you in a “real time” back and forth.
As a group of people who discovered each other through their mutual following of someone else (or something else, in the case of a trending topic), a Twitter stream is strong if it has a far reach, meaning the content of its users keeps reaching new people. One of the ways this happens is if the stream has amplification activity going on at many different times. People are retweeting and replying to one another about the content of someone they both follow regardless of whether that person is even online.
For those who are using # signs and other microsyntax for the purposes of propaganda they would do well to chart the times of the day in which their stream is the strongest—and then work from there to get others to tweet during the off hours.
One thing I wouldn’t recommend is using software to auto-tweet your content in intervals spaced out through 24 hours. That’s because I don’t recommend any auto-tweet software or software that “automatically” increases your number of followers or anything like that. Twitter is about being there, whenever you can make it—live and direct, in Twitter time. It could be once a day or a thousand—at 3AM eternal or 24/7…whatever works for you.
If you Tweet what’s real, when it’s real, you’ll never go wrong.
Twitter Telepathy is in the Streams
Last week I posted an article on Reality Sandwich about an experiment by Richard Wiseman that tested Twitter out as a tool for remote viewing. I’m excited by new avenues of research such as this that examine the potential of open social media platforms for being possible tools for non-causal, ESP-like communication. Wiseman wrote an article for New Scientist magazine about the results of a four day trial in which he asked participants to pick the secret location that he spent 30 minutes at out of several randomly chosen alternatives:
In the judging phase, participants were presented with five photographs, one showing the location and four decoys, and asked to select the target. The photograph that received the most votes was taken as the group’s decision.
If the group were psychic, the majority would vote for the correct target. In the first trial I was looking up at a striking, modern-looking building. Unfortunately, the group voted for some woods.
On trial two I was sitting in the middle of a playground, but the group thought I was standing at the foot of a long stairway. The third trial found me under an unusual-looking canopy; the group voted for a graveyard.
On the final trial I stared intently at a red postbox. The group believed that I was standing at the side of a canal. In short, all four trials were misses.
When I analysed believers and sceptics separately, the results were the same, with no difference between the groups.
So what did we learn? Well, the study didn’t support the existence of remote viewing and suggests that those who believe in the paranormal are simply good at finding illusory correspondences between their thoughts and a target – which is, maybe, why they believe in the first place. No surprises there. So perhaps the most important outcome was to demonstrate that thousands of people are happy to take part in an instant Twitter study. Now it is up to scientists to find other interesting ways of harnessing this new research tool.
My own take on these results is that the participants were too random and unconnected to make the chances for Twitter telepathy likely. As I’ve written here on this blog, Twitter telepathy is more likely between people who are a part of the same stream, which is to say, people who found and followed each other through their mutual following of someone else and don’t know each other in real life or through other Twitter connections. It’s not magic but the adaptation of parallel association processes between these ostensible strangers (who have in common their shared following of someone else) that allows for uncanny occurrences such as tweeting the same thing at the same time, or reading a tweet that was nearly exactly the same to one you were about to write—or how it more than occasionally is the case that someone in one of your streams will tweet a link to an article or blog post that is exactly what you were looking for at that exact moment—moreover, the answer comes before you can even fully formulate the question or the search term to Google.
Whether these “coincidences” supply practical information or spiritual salvation, the connections that create them are so interwoven and invisible so as to make it seem like magic—or like the group think of a flock of birds, or the way it will happen that people from different parts of the world come up with the same idea at the same time—or how once one person breaks a world record in sports there are suddenly many people who are able to do it, one after another.
I think it would be interesting to do another version of this same remote viewing experiment within streams—for example, all of those who are members of the Scoblelizer stream, or the #P2 peeps. I predict that the results would be an above average number of correct responses in picking out the correct location.
