Twittering is Sustainable

Articles like this one from today's Courier-Journal clearly point to something . . . the way we communicate with each other and the way movements sustain themselves is completely changing. When giant newspaper empires like Gannett cannot keep their business solvent when they are the dominant newspaper in a large metropolitan area, we all must realize that the world is changing and that chaos reigns. However, in chaos there is opportunity.

Since our movement is brand-spanking new, we have no legacy systems to deal with. Further, we are born in a place and time that is endowed with the currency of the new media economy -- ubiquitous broadband. I propose that we use this currency as the core of our methods to unite the people attracted to Sustainable Glasgow into community that gathers data, shares information, and coordinates responses in a near organic manner. While this blog and web site is a reasonable beginning, we can do much, much better.

To that end, I am hoping all SG members will start using Twitter. You can see a bit of how Twitter works on the left side of our web page www.sustainableglasgow.blogspot.com under the heading "Twitter Updates." If you will become a little adventurous and click on the link below that heading where it says "Follow Billy Ray on Twitter" you will be coached to sign up for a Twitter account and start following me. Once you do that, I will be notified and I will also take the option of following you. This is how this new phenomenon of social network grows organically and exponentially. Once we are all following each other then each time any of us has an idea or a notification for the group, then that person will use their internet connection or their cell phone and issue a "tweet" which the rest of us will immediately receive. That's how it mimics an organism like us; when one touches something hot, that message immediately gets relayed to the brain and then all other cells in the body know about it and they coordinate a reaction!

I am planning on putting a demonstration of this and other social networking technology on the agenda for our next meeting. Hopefully, ahem, one of our interns will be there to demonstrate this technology which that generation is already quite expert at using. If we are going to change the world, starting with Glasgow, we must learn to use the media currency that is going to survive our present economic meltdown.