Comment by ethbr1
1 month ago
At some point on William Gibson's now defunct micro blog*, he's about to embark on the book tour for Pattern Recognition (so circa 2003).
I'll butcher his insightful phrasing, but he remarks to the effect of
> I think I'm going to stop blogging. The act of sitting at a laptop and writing these posts seems incompatible with my life as it exists on a book tour. The only free moments available for it to occupy would be ones where I'm sitting, momentarily caught between two scheduled activities and staring off into space. I have a suspicion these moments are crucial for my soul. So, until we meet again.
The comingled ambiguousness and specificity of the observation stuck with me.
* https://web.archive.org/web/20070123212506/http://www.willia...
> William Gibson's now defunct micro blog
Isn't that what X/Twitter basically is (was?), a "micro blog"?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging
His posts were typically slightly longer than twitter. "Miniblog"? Topic + 2-5 sentences.
Also, he's a published writer... so that's another substantial difference with average twitter.
I have to admit, I had hoped that Bluesky would have countered that 300-character limitation and been a true microblog. I'm not sure why they chose to ape Twitter's limit.