Todd Levin: "Twitter is a very simple concept to explain. Imagine there is a tiny invisible girlfriend sitting on your shoulder, constantly whispering in your ear, demanding to know what you’re thinking at that precise moment. Now, imagine you decide to answer every instance of her question by sending a text message to her, and all of your friends... Even normal dinner conversation is enveloped in Twitter membrane. Sometimes the person you’re talking to will drop out in mid-sentence to attend to his or her blinking mobile device. Twitter provides a never-ending stream of messages communicating some additional later of information—about a party, a panel, the impending arrival of another dinner guest, an inside joke—outside of your experience in that physical moment. It’s frustrating to lose the concept of “undivided attention” but not as frustrating as being unaware of the secret Twitter metaconversation happening around you... I scoff and wonder if they are all incapable of experiencing anything without placing an LCD screen between themselves and the world... A man with a fedora spends a lot of time playing Asteroids, pausing to drink his beer between cleared levels. Someone captures this with a video camera, and I capture the videographer, capturing the video game, and write about it here, and others link to it. Layer after layer of mediated experience. I am tempted to look up from my computer right now for evidence of a boom microphone held by a stranger..."