Tweeting the Joint Session
Last weekend saw the 2009 Joint Session of the Mind Association and the Aristotelian Society, which this year was hosted by the philosophers at the UEA in Norwich. I’ve posted some photos.
Highlights for me included seeing Hartry Field trying to extend his epistemic evaluativism (basically a form of expressivism) to (at least some uses of) the word ‘valid’. Downsides included the widespread practice of Open Session speakers chairing their own talks, which I think is nearly impossible to do well (though praiseworthy efforts were made by many).
Another notable feature of this year’s conference was the live Twitter coverage (search #JointSession on Twitter to find it). I very much enjoyed reading and contributing to this, and I would like to see the practice of livetweeting philosophy conferences continue and become more widespread. Here are a couple of the major benefits that occur to me:
(1) Philosophers who are not present can follow in real time. I’ve seen a number of people who do this report “feeling as if they were there” and expressing gratitude to those providing coverage. And I know I myself enjoyed following the recent AAP from afar in this way. Philosophers following the tweets of those present can ask someone who is there to expand on something they’ve just tweeted about. They might even in principle – though I’ve not yet (to my knowledge) seen this done – ask a question of a speaker by proxy. Although asking a question without hearing the talk could be tricky, the person channelling it could help by making an assessment of things like whether the point has been covered by the speaker already and whether the question is in other ways appropriate.
(2) Philosophers in the audience of a talk can communicate with one another. If something goes by too quickly, reminds you of something interesting, confuses you, or whatever, you can let others present (who, presumably, are interested in reading such things) know, and they may be able to respond helpfully and/or interestingly. You can also share jokes and other fun without whispering or passing notes. Maybe this last element is less intellectually laudable, but it is no less a good-making feature of the practice in my opinion.
Of course, there are also drawbacks. For balance, I’ll mention two:
(1) I’ve had to develop the skill of staying focused on a talk whilst also tweeting; this is not something that I was able to do straight away. When I first started livetweeting philosophy talks I was undoubtedly distracted by it. But this particular multi-tasking ability is definitely improving with practice, in my case at least.
(2) I would imagine that some speakers and other audience members might find the presence of tweeting philosophers annoying, distracting and/or offensive. Offence, for example, might be generated by the (in my impression generally inaccurate) suspicion that those tweeting the talk are not really listening, or are bored, or are checking their emails.
I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of other philosophers about this practice.
I just noticed that one other perspective is already available: http://logicmatters.blogspot.com/2009/07/twitter-is-sometimes-not-entirely.html
I’m obviously a fan of the conference-twittering philosopher, too. Let me add one advantage, and question one disadvantage.
An advantage: I’m a great believer in the power of summarizing to help achieve understanding. Listening to a talk with the intention of being able to extract from it tweet-length statements of important philosophical contributions can be a way of focusing on content, and getting to the heart of things.
(Preemptive defensiveness: Yes, of _course_ there is much more to philosophy than will easily fit into a tweet, and yes of _course_ a 140-character summary will pass over important and valuable distinctions. Nobody’s denying that.)
On disadvantage (2): I think that tweeting, done responsibly, ought to be pretty far down the list of most annoying or distracting things audience members can do. Tweeting is silent and done solo, contrasting with people typing on laptops, and that most distracting of all distractions, people leaning over to one another and whispering. As for whether speakers think we’re not paying attention, (a) wider knowledge of the practice of tweeting conferences can help, and (b) many good activities can look like ones from people who aren’t paying attention. Discussing a point with your neighbor looks like discussing where to go for dinner. Taking notes with a pen and paper looks like doodling. Thinking deeply looks like sleeping. Etc.
“(a) wider knowledge of the practice of tweeting conferences can help”
Agreed. That is part of the purpose of this post.
Hear. Hear….to all of the above. I loved following the JointSession tweets – thanks for risking the appearance of being rude for all of us.
I agree that as more philosophers are aware of twittering conference happenings, the less rude it will seem to people.
Another thing that might help is if philosophers are simply more aware of the wide range of legitimate conference uses of smartphones. For example, I use mine to take notes. I like taking notes on my smartphone because they immediately get synced to an online account….I can’t do that with paper and pen.
Wouldn’t it be cool to have another screen set up next to the screen with the slides on it connected to the hashtag for the conference.
Or perhaps that would be too distracting…