Any proper treatment of Twitter would take several thousands of words, but I'll try to do it here as quickly as possible. (I'll try and keep it under 140 characters)
Periodically here we wax anthropological, because we are anthropological waxers. At times we are light hearted, at other times we are fucking pissed off. Today, though, I'm waxing...
Twitter and Cultural Evolution
Human evolution is grounded in, among other critical factors, three key drivers:
1. Use of Tools
2. Invention (often with the tools)
3. Communication (about the tools and inventions)
Invention
First consider invention, that is, the creation of new things and new ways of doing things. Think fire, which has been controlled and manipulated by human populations for roughly 200,000 years, and has been used in cooking food for some 100,000 years. Fire not only rid harmful bacteria from food, it also was a source of heat and a deterrent against large game (lions, tigers, etc) at night around camp for our nomadic, hunter-gatherer ancestors. Less bacteria in meat, warmth, and safety, all helped increase the life span of early human groups. Exactly how fire was first understood and controlled is not known, but its role in human evolution is.
Tools
An example of the second factor--tool use--is hunting (and hunting technology). Hunting big game (animals that are physically larger and potentially deadly-big cats, for example) represented human's movement up the food chain (where we have been ever since--not sure how this is working out so far?). This depended both on new forms of social organization and technology (i.e. tools). Spears and scrapers made the hunting and the prep work possible, which increased the protein intake of early hominids, etc. In this sense, tools rocked-and-rolled evolution.
Communication
And they still do. Technological tools (from hunting technology to the domestication of plants and animals around 10,000 years ago, to irrigation for agriculture, to monumental architecture, to the maritime revolution to the industrial revolution to the information revolution) drive human evolution. For there to be long term utility in the invention of a new tool or technology, it needs to be communicated across the population so that it can diffuse and be useful. Thus the evolutionary importance of communication (and specifically for humans, language).
In considering the long evolutionary history of the role of tools in cultural change, today's Web 2.0 tools really are no different than previous tools. These tools do what tools do for human groups. While there are many out there to be considered, currently I am fascinated with Twitter.
At its core, twitter is a form of communication, even considered in an evolutionary sense. A tool that facilitates communication across time and space in ways that have yet to be experimented with in human evolution. Much of it is mundane and, from an outside view, useless. But I'm beginning to suspect that this is precisely the point. It is simply a new tool that enables people to communicate and connect with people that share their interests and values.
Twitter and Tribalism
In this respect, what twitter is enabling is the connection of like-minded people globally, into virtual tribes of peeps that periodically meet up and have a fucking blast together! (SXSW, for example). This is what Loic Le Meur is getting at in his brilliant Moving Circus Manifesto! More clearly than perhaps any other manifesto (since the Cluetrain Manifesto), Loic has distilled the Twitter Moment in human evolution perfectly.
Call it Twitterlution, or something. No way to know what happens from here, but communication is what humans do, and twitter is just a new tool to make that happen.
Was that less than 140 characters?
The Butcher
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