My first thought when I heard this was how stupid. But there is an unbelievable amount of information on twitter. I saw a great infographic on this at one point but I can;t find it now. I think a lot of interesting things could be learned by studying twitter. It would be a great source for training an algorithm to predict future events. Very useful for national security as a training dataset. Does it need to be in the library of congress for this to happen? Probably not.
In the end, I think twitter is a more legitimate source of info than it seems at first glance. With that said, I believe there should be some kind of quality filter for what is in the Library of Congress so I do not agree with the decision.
- I think they'll run out of room, - the Library of Congress doesn't but should pay royalties me for my copyrightable wit if they want to archive me, - and I think that Cocktail Quotes is best left for us.
I can imagine that the Library of congress will be able to archive all tweets, forever, for like $20k, which is a vast wealth of information. Yes that random dude that tweets about his laundry being done will be on there, but from a sociological perspective, you can literally watch as news breaks from a macro scale. I think it's a great use of resources.
Keep in mind the use of Twitter and its impact in Iran, and getting that photojournalist freed in Egypt.
I think it's a great idea. Wisdom of the masses. Yes there's a lot of crap. 300 years ago white men were the only ones writing and getting published. We've lost the voices of whole sections of society. Crap is subjective; save it all and sort it out in 200 years.
13 comments:
I vacillate between 2 opinions:
1. I don't give a crap about twitter and much of it seems to be inane anyways.
2. Future GWU students seeking an MA in Sociology will want to do qualitative analysis on it so they can avoid the IRB.
no, it's so stupid
I am highly amused that @cocktailquotes will be part of national records, so, yes.
i don't tweet, so i have no personal stake, but honestly i think that's about the dumbest thing ever.
Only as a matter of "history"...because 10 years from now Twitter will be long, long gone.
real glad we cant solve real problems in this country but we can waste time and money archiving twitter. so stupid.
i don't understand the value, really. and its soooooooooo much data. why why why?
My first thought when I heard this was how stupid. But there is an unbelievable amount of information on twitter. I saw a great infographic on this at one point but I can;t find it now. I think a lot of interesting things could be learned by studying twitter. It would be a great source for training an algorithm to predict future events. Very useful for national security as a training dataset. Does it need to be in the library of congress for this to happen? Probably not.
In the end, I think twitter is a more legitimate source of info than it seems at first glance. With that said, I believe there should be some kind of quality filter for what is in the Library of Congress so I do not agree with the decision.
It seems dumb for the Library of Congress to do it, but somebody needs to preserve Newt Gingrich's jackassery for posterity.
No because:
- I think they'll run out of room,
- the Library of Congress doesn't but should pay royalties me for my copyrightable wit if they want to archive me,
- and I think that Cocktail Quotes is best left for us.
using ASCII code, each character is a byte
140 characters of text = 140 bytes
Assume there is meta data and other info, 200 bytes per tweet.
1GB of storage = 1,073,741,824 bytes
1 GB = 5,368,709 Tweets
1 TB = 5,368,709,120 Tweets (5.3 Billion)
I can buy a 1 TB hard drive for $100 or less.
I can imagine that the Library of congress will be able to archive all tweets, forever, for like $20k, which is a vast wealth of information. Yes that random dude that tweets about his laundry being done will be on there, but from a sociological perspective, you can literally watch as news breaks from a macro scale. I think it's a great use of resources.
Keep in mind the use of Twitter and its impact in Iran, and getting that photojournalist freed in Egypt.
Great article if you want to read more:
Why the Library of Congress cares about archiving our tweets
I think it's a great idea. Wisdom of the masses. Yes there's a lot of crap. 300 years ago white men were the only ones writing and getting published. We've lost the voices of whole sections of society. Crap is subjective; save it all and sort it out in 200 years.
Can I delete tweets from the past that I don't want to be "on the record?"
I think it's a great idea though.
Post a Comment