Category: writing

Travel and airports seem to show up on Twitter all the time. The in-between times that were private moments of boredom and pain become a kind of blues refrain echoing through Twitter and the other microblogging venues.

It’s Dave Winer stuck in the Lone Star State, Jeremy Keith boarding a plane to San Francisco, Hugh Macleod picking up his baggage, or Steve Gillmor interviewing someone walking through an airport terminal. We work in the off hours, and now we transcribe our private moments of boredom and wedge a conversation into walk to the security gate.

Perhaps it’s Ev Williams fault, asking us what we’re doing— when we’re doing something very boring. But because it’s boring, we need an outlet for our pain. Twitter beckons.

I’ve finally had a Twitter moment. I’ve been exploring Twitter, trying to understand what everyone finds so fascinating. My Twitter moment was watching the stream go by, and reading Jeremy Keith’s tweet: “I’m coining the phrase: Continuous partial Christmas.” I’d just come back from Walgreen’s and seen the Christmas decorations going up right along with the Halloween costumes.

Multi-tasking is often really only continous partial attention. Retailing is now just continuous partial Christmas.