Twitter

I've decided to use twitter as an unobtrusive communication tool for PHIL170 this winterterm. A couple of thoughts for people new to it.

I commented to someone that it's a bit of a Zen thing. At first it seems mysterious, and then it makes sense. But explaining how/why is difficult. For now, trust me: just check it regularly and use it as you like.

On public and private: you can have more than one Twitter account. I have LogicDoc, which is private. It's private because it's for a special purpose and only relevant to the people in the class. But anyone who's been around a while knows that it never makes sense to put anything on the web that you would prefer others not to see. And so if you follow that advice, it's fine -- and can be a good thing -- NOT to block others from following your tweets. As you get used to twitter, you'll see that an awful lot of people -- including some semi-famous ones -- let anyone follow their tweets.

My public twitter address is allen_stairs. I don't recommend it to you unless you have a peculiar interest in the mental goings-on of a middle-aged philosophy professor. But it really makes no difference to me whether you (or anyone else) does or doesn't follow me, because I never put anything there that I would be embarrassed to have anyone read.

For the course: please let me follow your tweets so that communcation will be easier. If you would prefer that I not do that, then I'd ask a favor: create a second twitter account just for the purpose of this course. Block me from your preferred account, but submit a follow request from the second account and let me follow that. Needless to say, I have no interest in prying into your private business, but being able to have the whole class linked on twitter may make a lot of things easier.

But meanwhile, enjoy twitter. If someone had told me two years ago that something like twitter would catch one, I wouldn't have believed them. But somehow, it works.