December 2013 My 2¢ “Sorry for the long letter, I didn’t have the time to write a shorter one.” Well, that’s me. My daughter Bianca, who’s 17, doesn’t tweet. My older daughter Dora doesn’t tweet. On the other hand, one of our reporters, who’s in her early 30s, tweets, as do some of my friends in their 50s. VideoAge Monthly tweets, VideoAge Daily doesn’t. I don’t tweet, I don’t have the time or the patience to use the 140- character micro-blogging service to express my thoughts. Do you remember that expression, “Sorry for the long letter, I didn’t have the time to write a shorter one?” Well, that’s me. By the way, even though that quote and/or variations thereof are attributed to at least four people, including Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw, the original author is French mathematician Blaise Pascal (Provincial Letters, December 1656). Indeed, according to the one joke that I could actually understand clearly told by Scottish-born comedian and latenight U.S. TV host Craig Ferguson, “About a third of the members of [the U.S.] Congress are on Twitter. Now we know why nothing is getting done.” On the other hand, I like Facebook because there are lots of pictures. And I like pictures because we all know they’re worth 1,000 words without actually having to write them. Plus, not having a parent company behind me (or any parent for that matter since I’m now an orphan), I have to work. As the great Irish writer Oscar Wilde once explained, the “influence of a permanent income on thought.” If all goes well — meaning if one remembers the user name and password (which I don’t) among the other 15 or so to memorize — it takes me about 27 minutes to think of, write, edit, proof-read, cut and paste and post a seemingly clever tweet, plus one hour to regret it. In that span of time I could be catching up on the new TV terminology (new words are invented daily by tweeters who have nothing better to do!) so that when I attend conferences I’ll be able to understandwhat those erudite panelists are talking about without turning to the person next to me to ask what’s a “hip-pocket series” or “cringe-viewing” and “drunk dialing” or “even flashcasting.” An alternative would be to get a set of headphones for simultaneous translation, hoping that those obscure words would make more sense in Swahili. I could also use that time to listen to my wife. … On second thought, better not! But surely I could use it to call my friend-in-theknow Shirley (warning: never call Shirley surely) to find out what’s going on in the Hollywood Hills (there is always something interesting going on in Hollywood, but only between 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.), or call my nerdy friend Buzz (who seems to work in his hightech company’s cafeteria, next to the daycare center) to find out what the buzz is in the Valley (Silicon Valley). The Valley is where Twitter originated to make our lives more meaningful. But I’m not going to follow the tweets to get the buzz because tweets are uncool since nerds use them to do nerdy things. That precious 27-minute tweet time could also be used to start scanning the pile of newspaper clippings I set aside for when I have more time to read. Or to finish another chapter of one of the six books I started reading, but haven’t been able to finish. To quote the great satirist, Austrian Karl Kraus, who once said around the 1930s, “Howdo I find time to read so little?” However, I recognize that tweets could be useful. According to comedian and latenight U.S. TV host Conan O’Brien, “The United States has been using Twitter to help fight the Taliban. The theory is the Taliban will surrender if they read enough tweets from [hip-hop recording artist] Kanye West.” Now, don’t get the idea that I prefer to stay up late to watch those late-night shows instead of catching up with my reading. The truth is that I get those soundbytes from friends’ tweets. Dom Serafini I don’t tweet. Don’t have the twime or the motweevation to do it! “In that tweet I said I wanted you to re-sign. Not resign.” 26
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