Briefly, on Twitter

I am intrigued by how little I know about my own grandfather. It’s not like he lived very long ago. We’re not that far removed in time and space. Fifty years ago, he was alive, with his own dental practice in Dubuque. The time distance I can calculate in my head; the spatial realm, however, I don’t immediately know. Fortunately, I can just consult Google Maps. All I have to do is type “maps.google.com” into my browser, hit enter, click a few times, punch in the names of the two cities, and voila. Google informs me that Dubuque, Iowa is less than two hours away from Iowa City. (I am told that, in the Midwest, the people measure distances in terms of time. It seems silly to convey directions in any other way; why do I care if something Dubuque is 84.1 miles from here, unless for the sake of making a statement about spatial separation in an essay?)

Regardless.

I am not surprised by the lack of local information about my grandfather. What does seem strange is that I can’t find a list of members of the 273rd regiment, or the 69th division – World War II is something that public schools in the United States discuss ad nauseam. I feel like we studied it in history class, had at least one unit on the war itself or on the Holocaust, at least once per year, starting in middle school or earlier right on up through all the grades, finishing with U.S. Government, which my high school required to graduate. The point being that this was a major world event (obviously, since “world” is in the name); why can’t I find an online list of the veterans who served in that war?

My internet research has turned up some pretty interesting things about the 273rd regiment and the 69th division. Without verifying that my grandfather was there, though, I don’t feel like I can include their actions and accomplishments in this essay.

Anyway, my point was that I am not terribly far removed from my grandfather, even though I never knew him; I know people he knew, he lived in a city not far away, and less than half a century has passed since he walked the earth (slightly more than half a century ago, he attended the same university at which I am currently a student). We are not distant, and yet – we are, all because of a bygone means of recording history.

What I mean by this is that my grandchildren could potentially know a great deal about my daily life, my habits, my likes and dislikes, as well as my achievements, my own works. While a Google search for my grandfather’s name turns up my own blog posts that mention him, and then a series of unrelated links, the same search for Hannah Kane pops up my Facebook, my Twitter, and various blogs of mine (as well as the MySpace page of someone who is absolutely not me). My generation, it seems, conceives differently of keeping “historical” records.

The Library of Congress is archiving tweets. Someday, should they undertake a quest similar to mine, my grandchildren (if they exist; if the world exists) will be able to pull up my Twitter. They will be treated to morsels such as:

sebhar H. Marcella Kane
AND on sex and pop culture paper. Feelin like a bamf.
4 hours ago

sebhar H. Marcella Kane
A on sex and pop culture midterm!
4 hours ago

sebhar H. Marcella Kane
The other Hannah in this class is lucky I didn't go full-on sex-positive feminist on her.
4 hours ago

sebhar H. Marcella Kane
"If you don't know what a MILF is, ask the person next to you." So glad I decided to come to lecture.
5 hours ago

sebhar H. Marcella Kane
Bleeding!
6 hours ago

sebhar H. Marcella Kane
So. Hungry.
7 hours ago

…the minutiae of my existence. My compulsion to share these things is not unique, however. Per Wikipedia (more on that later), “According to Quancast, 27 million people in the US used Twitter as of 09/03/2009.” This figure is over a year old, but even without accounting for new users that have joined since then, it’s obvious that I am not alone, and even that Twitter is quite popular. Wikipedia also states that “Twitter had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007. This grew to 100 million tweets posted per quarter in 2008. By the end of 2009, two billion tweets per quarter were being posted. In February 2010 Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day. By March 2010, Twitter recorded over 70,000 registered applications, according to the company. In the first quarter of 2010, 4 billion tweets were posted. As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets are posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter.” [Wikipedia and Twitter quotes were retrieved 11/10/2010]

I myself have posted 22,164 tweets as of this moment. Whenever I send a tweet, 373 people see it – and the Library of Congress records it.

My dad has, somewhere in his possession, a three-page autobiography written by his father, either in high school or college, but for a class. I am one of a handful of people who has ever read it.

This applies elsewhere, too. I know more about Kristin Chenoweth’s life than that of my own grandfather:
KChenoweth Kristin Chenoweth
Omg I just ate at The Three Monkeys bar at 54 and 8th. I'm dying its so good!
9 Nov

I have been in contact with my father via email since I first interviewed him on the phone. He sent me the email addresses of my two great-aunts, Benita and Carol, the younger sisters of my grandpa Dick. They were so much younger than he that, according to my understanding, he was more of a father figure to them; however, I am as yet uncertain that email is admissible evidence in my exploration of the use of personal computers in the construction of history. Though email can be archived, copied, and pasted just as easily as the rest of the internet, I wonder if something so distinctly not public can truly count as history – at least, at this point. In the past, newspaper headlines – public – were history, were fact; journals, letters, and the like, were private, not history. Now, of course, we consider all these types of documents to be historical, but is the email yet capable of historical impact? This is something I will have to decide for myself – probably based on the quality (or at least interest value) of anything my great-aunts send to me.

Is that not my very point, though? Can I include Twitter – where one can set one’s account to private, so that it can neither be found by searches nor viewed by anyone the account owner has not expressly approved – and exclude email? Perhaps I should be less prejudiced toward the less public, since the form of a letter (or email) permits the writer to express him- or herself in his or her own words; thus, email allows writers to constitute, represent, and speak their own minds as they see fit, without mediation – the true essence of that person may be captured.