The Massachusetts Historical Society is publishing the one-liner diary entries that President John Quincy Adams made in late August, 1809; his posts were all 140 characters or less, so it’s doing it via Twitter. You can read them as if he’s tweeting each day, 200 years later.
He has 4,200+ followers, so a few social media advocates have said this proves there’s value in micro-blog (short) posts. While the technology of Twitter may be new, the desire and utility behind the behavior is hundreds of years old. If Adams could tweet without a mobile phone app, shouldn’t we all consider it almost an obligation to do so now?
Er, no. But the real history behind it is pretty interesting:
- Diaries humanize experience. Adams described August 6, 1809 like this: "Thick fog. Scanty Wind — On George’s Bank. Lat: 42-34. Read Massillon’s Careme Sermons 2 & 3. Ladies &c. Sick." How cool is that? It’s like you’re there, standing in a long ago moment that otherwise evaporated the moment after it was immortalized.
- The brevity of the entries isn’t a plus. Adams kept other, more detailed diaries, so it seems that his log was more of a table of contents, or memory prompt. For all that I think I get from reading it, the entries were cues to lots more that only Adams could recall.
- At the time, nobody would have cared anyway. Back in the dark days of Analog Existence, knowing what others were doing or thinking was based on infrequent input, and lots of assumption. Adams’ fellows wouldn’t have felt the need for the incessant quanta and abbreviated detail of tweets.
- Everybody kept lists…for themselves. Thomas Jefferson recorded every bottle of wine he drank for a quarter century (and how much he paid for each). Emily Dickinson wrote poems for herself. The centuries-old tradition isn’t to share this information, but rather to record it for one’s own consumption.
Interestingly, Adams must have felt that he could capture what was important to memorialize in a single entry each day. So he wasn’t a proto-tweeter; he was anything but.
There’s nothing ambient, or constant, or social about keeping a diary. Tweets are disposable, life histories are not. We are frail, impermanent human beings, and we have a natural desire to want to capture some small part of our brief time on this planet. That’s what Adams did.
It’s not different from what you or I could do. Typed. In pen and ink, or even using a crayon. Capturing tidbits of existence that will help give shape and form to your memories down the road. Noting things that matter, presuming the only person who will ever want to read them again will be you.
The Bulb Asks:
- Are you sure you’re analyzing data objectively?
- For every obvious behavior, there’s probably an underlying one that’s more true.
- I should be capturing these posts somewhere more permanent than here, right?
Original Post: http://dimbulb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/08/john-quincy-adams-didnt-tweet.html
