With the entity formerly known as Twitter vanishing in the rearview mirror, here are two articles from the early days, when we wondered what it was and what it might become. A global conversation? A mosaic of communities and interests? Perhaps you remember.
These people threaten to destroy one of the internet’s nicest things. Twitter is a happy accident, a fortuity, a quirk.
First published in the New York Review of Books, January 16, 2013. or a brief time in the 1850s the telegraph companies of England and the United States thought that they could (and should) preserve every message that passed through their wires. Millions of telegrams—in fireproof safes. Imagine the possibilities for history “Fancy some future Macaulay rummaging among such a store, and painting...