A Tale of Two Twitterers

You may recall the Quote of the Day from earlier this month in which John Piper made an argument against social media like Facebook and Twitter which he then refutes, saying “These media tend to shorten attention spans, weaken discursive reasoning, lure people away from Scripture and prayer, disembody relationships, feed the fires of narcissism, cater to the craving for attention, fill the world with drivel, shrink the soul’s capacity for greatness, and make us second-handers who comment on life when we ought to be living it.”

A new article from American Conservative magazine, “Brevity Is the Soul of Twit,” presents a nice counter to Piper’s straw man argument.

It’s trendy to lament Twitter’s vacuity. But might 140 characters be just the right space for “the clear, the brief, the bold”? With the Internet awash in too many syllables, Twitter could cut through the clutter, if only its authors brought sufficient wit.”

Who’s right? Is Twitter a destructive force or constructive? Probably a little bit of both.

Read the rest here.