Clive Thompson on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense

It’s like proprioception, your body’s ability to know where your limbs are. That subliminal sense of orientation is crucial for coordination: It keeps you from accidentally bumping into objects, and it makes possible amazing feats of balance and dexterity.

Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.

This piece explains some of the attraction and addictivity of Twitter, and goes a good long way to explaining why it isn’t setting my world on fire. I have 0 (zero) friends on Twitter. I can see how it can be very useful for organising groups of friends, but… actually, if the criteria for friendship here is “feeling the need of micro-updates of activities, moods, whatever, on a minute-by-minute basis” then no, I guess I just don’t have any friends. The people I consider my closest friends, almost without exception, are people without any online profile at all, or people whose online profiles do not impinge upon my relationship with them. Most of my time and energy, however, seems to be directed online, where as far as I know, few if any of my close friends read this blog.

I know, my social life could use a vigorous kick from something. Twitter and Facebook aren’t presently very promising sources of that necessary stimulation, although they might be useful once I actually, you know, make some “friends”…

Hey. Hey, you. You want to be my “friend”?

Well, exactly.