DesertStandard

Had a great conversation last night about life and things. One point was made about writing with a constraint of 300 words is much tougher than free form because you have to be very mindful of your choice of words. I immediately thought of a post I had just read earlier in the day:Creative Constraints: Going to Jail to Get Free | 43 Folders by Merlin Mann. He starts talking about some examples of how Twitter enforces this.

In Twitter you are limited to 140 characters per message, just like a text from your phone. Mann points out that this creates opportunities for creative writing by confining us to how much we can say.

I am playing with the six word constraint for the rest of the week:
https://twitter.com/halfacat

Tweet Tweet.

Biray is going deep this week with an article on mindfulness and technology. She covers the topic of mindfulness, living in the present, and ponders how we can use technology to help others achieve mindfulness. Central to her argument is the use of Twitter:

If you’re introducing mindfulness to someone who has yet to fully experience it, how can you tell if what you’re teaching is helping them understand the concept? Or better yet, how do you know if they are even applying its principles? You don’t. Which is why I think using Twitter can be a metaphor for demonstrating both an understanding and the application of mindfulness.

This is a fascinating subject and one that is central to where we are going with how the Internet continues to encompass our lives. Its all about communication and a continuation of the telegraph to the telephone to the webpage. We are becoming more and more instant and permanent. This combination allows us to get more of our thoughts out to share with everyone else. Tools like Twitter and Facebook make it easier to organize and access this information.

What do you think? Can technology help us learn more about who we really are?

Be Fit With Biray » Mindful Tweets