Quick! Grab the latest scientific study that may have something remotely to do with Twitter! Run it with a “Twitter Will Destroy Humanity!” headline! With a graphic by Hieronymus Bosch!
Here’s how it all started: A University of Southern California study, which is slated for publication next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition, has come to the reported conclusion that Twitter can/might/will turn humanity into a teeming mass of barbarians who engage in all matter of mass killings, wanton torturing, rape, and other atrocities. Or something.
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a researcher and co-author on the study, has been quoted far and wide across the Internets with such gems as:
“If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality.”
Possibly—though “fully experiencing emotions” about others’ psychological states is not something that humans were ever particularly good at. Plus “implications for our morality” can be drawn from just about anywhere, on the Internet or no.
Not to mention the small matter, which some reports fail to mention, that the study’s methodology had absolutely nothing to do with Twitter.
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•Plants can twitter, but it seems celebrities can’t—not on their own, anyway.
• Toxic sofas, after being shipped from China with packets of a harmful mold-inhibitor, caused extreme skin rashes and burns on at least 1,600—and possibly tens of thousands not yet identified—people in England.
• Science education is under assault in Texas.
• In another move of, weirdly, putting animals on birth control, China is putting gerbils on the pill.
• Daddy long-legs are threatened by climate change, a gorilla suffered a seizure and was given an MRI, and a campaign helps endangered species by enlisting clothing brands to save their namesakes: Lacoste to the crocodiles’ rescue!
• Also, we’re doomed.
Ok, for anyone not on Twitter, it’s time to reevaluate: These days, even plants are doing it. And successfully, too—Pothos has 2,300 followers, and when it tweets, it almost always gets what it wants.
Granted, all it wants is water, but when plant owners are forgetful or just don’t have a green thumb, their green friends often go thirsty. The solution? Botanicalls, a device that sends wireless signals to Twitter. It’s made of soil moisture sensors that transmit information (too much moisture? too little?) through a circuit board to a microcontroller, just like a mini-computer.
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Love ‘em or hate ‘em, social networking tools are growing faster than anyone can keep track of, and are being used plenty of unexpected ways.
Some developments are questionably beneficial, like new education standards in England that may require students to learn to use online tools like Twitter and Wikipedia, while scrapping history. Who needs a textbook to teach the Second World War when you can learn about it from a user-generated encyclopedia?
Other ideas have ambition, like Nokia’s investment in a California startup that will allow cell phones to act, essentially, like credit cards. Now, the developed world may not need additional forms of credit, but in countries where people often lack bank accounts, the ability to use prepaid phone credit as cash—or to transfer funds for a loan to a friend, for example—will facilitate transactions and a lot of everyday life.
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• Recession? What recession? Home builders turn to unused shipping containers for building materials (though honestly it’s hard to fault their innovation).
• Scientists in Mexico successfully turn tequila into diamond films. Sales of Cuervo skyrocket.
• Watching TV makes you pregnant! Well, not really. But a new study seems determined to link the two. Granted, eating junk food may have just as much of a link.
• Wine connoisseurs, guard your fridges: The newest MLB secret may be keeping balls in a humidor (uh, baseballs, of course).
• Literature in the Internet age: The Twitter novel. ‘Nuff said.
• Think we’ve got a health care crisis brewing? Well here’s something to chew on: Leprosy is still present in the U.S. We wonder what the Aetna coverage is like for that one.
