Long, long time ago I put a post on this blog about how a web page is more like a medieval manuscript than like the page of a printed book. The reverse evolution continues. Now a medievalist is telling us that Twitter, and especially live tweeting in conferences, is like the marginal annotations in a medieval manuscript, in the blog In The Middle. I love the notion that modern media are releasing us from the tyranny of the authority of the printed word and taking us back to the chaotic threads of medieval thought.
I do wonder what some of those stern old academics of yore would have thought about it. You know, the ones whose conference papers were circulated with "Draft only. Not for publication or circulation." printed all over them. Then the book of the conference wouldn't come out for another five years and everyone would have forgotten about it.
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