Scoble off speed

I’m old enough to remember the time when kids who wanted to look cool and mischievous would talk about “speed”, when referring to the pop-icon of all drugs, amphetamine and most notably its commercial-named version called Benzedrine.

Benzedrine was the stimulant of choice for those living a fast life, both figuratively and not. Barry Newman’s Kowalski gobbles bennies in his mad race against himself until he paints his Dodge Challenger on a Cat blade in “Vanishing Point“.

I think that microblogging is the benzedrine of the blogosphere: instant reaction, careful evaluation is replaced by reflex writing. Uberblogger Robert Scoble called it quits yesterday, on grounds of so much of his knowledge having gone to waste because microblogging is quintessential streaming – finding stuff that’s not absolutely current is difficult, if not outright impossible.

In other words, a lot of what happens on Twitter or FriendFeed doesn’t stick and hence is irrelevant five minutes after it’s happened. I see a lot of people trying to demonstrate that Twitter powered the protests around Iran elections, but I really think that the only thing the little bird contributed was the fact that it was technically more difficult to block.

Blogging is slower, true, but this very interaction with Robert’s own post would be impossible on Twitter or FF – in a way, their conundrum reminds me of Second Life: there, too, interaction required contemporaneous presence – a damning limitation, esp. when coupled with the performance degradation brought by surge in usage.

So welcome down to Scoble, but not for long ! I have something that – take my word for it -  will get you high again !!