Who's listening to our tweets?

Saturday, August 8, 2009

[SEE, THINK, TALK]

Murmur Study from Christopher Baker on Vimeo.

via [Vimeo]

My latest tweet: “I don’t think I’ll ever get the taste of yogurt soda out of my mouth.”

No one cares. Besides providing a laugh for a few of my friends, these 140-character-limit tidbits serve no real purpose and will undoubtedly join all my other status updates in the information void, never to be heard from again. Right? Think again. Turns out somebody is listening to our tweets. Bordering on creepy, Murmur Study hears our pain. Literally. It also prints it out.

Murmur Study is an installation that “consists of 30 thermal printers that continuously monitor Twitter for new messages containing variations on common emotional utterances. Messages containing hundreds of variations on words such as argh, meh, grrrr, oooo, ewww, and hmph, are printed as an endless waterfall of text accumulating in tangled piles below.”

In one sense, it’s a fascinating collection of all the digital small talk in the micro-messaging world, a record of water-cooler conversations. In that sense, Murmur Study is incredible. In another sense, it reminds us that our fleeting thoughts are “accumulated, archived and digitally-indexed by corporations.” Somewhere in the information void our personal, often emotional, statements are being heard and recorded.

In that sense: über creepy.

Someone is listening. Should we be excited or worried?

:: creepy stalker phobia by Lindsay McComb

Who Are The "Tweet' Police?