Back on 28 November, Neal Gabler wrote a very insightful piece in the Los Angeles Times about the latest revolution coming out of the social networking buzz called “The Zuckerberg Revolution.” Apparently the littlest billionaire has proclaimed that:

E-mail, the last Internet link to traditional, epistolary, interpersonal communication, is, he said, outmoded. Young people, by which he meant younger than his own 26 years, desired something more nimble for their iPads, mobile phones and other devices. What he proposed was a “social inbox” where users could readily access messages from friends and then sort them — sort of a cross between instant messaging and Twitter.

Yup, another revolution.  I know. I had a hard time keeping a straight face, too.

Gabler goes on to state what is both obvious and necessary in the face of such a claim; that if we are reduced to communicating in tweets and blips of data, where do the ideas live in our written discourse?  Leaving aside the question of what a 26 year-old kid could possibly have to say about the world of ideas when he’s just barely figuring out concepts like “privacy,” Gabler makes some trenchant critiques of Zuckerberg’s vision for future exchanges of thought, all boiled down to 160 characters or something comparable.  In short, the mind is repelled.

I read a carefully-controlled Twitter stream, in that I only follow a very few people who actually have something to say.  Those tweets that I find the most rewarding are links that take me somewhere else to an article or blog that is more expansive.  Opportunities for truly interesting, short communications are rare.  Consider the case of Sir Charles Napier, a British officer ordered to put down a rebellion in the Indian province of Sindh in 1842, but who was specifically ordered not to capture it.  However, an opportunity arose that allowed Sir Charles to do just that, and he took it.  The British War Office received his coded message consisting of a single word: PECCAVI, which is Latin for, “I have sinned.”  The rest of us aren’t that lucky, or that witty.

It is remarkable how things change.  In 1970 American writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer helped establish an essay contest with a cash prize to be awarded to the best essay on a subject chosen by the prize committee.  The essay could not be more than 500 words.  Critics answered that it was simply not possible to treat a subject in any depth in so few words.  Hoffer replied that in his experience any idea could be expressed in 200 words or less.  “I have therefore,” he replied, “given you enough room for two and a half ideas.”  A master of precise, efficient prose, one wonders what Hoffer would think of a revolution that reduces the textual thoughtspace to 160 letters.  You can express ideas, but neither well nor persuasively.

But at the end of the day, the revolutions that come out of the corporate world that are supposed to make us better connected, smarter, more popular, richer, etc. do not stem from the desire to actually revolutionize anything in a meaningful way.  Zuckerberg is trying to create products to sell and make money. The revolution is in the mind of the marketer.  Meanwhile, those who seek ways to broaden and proliferate ideas, instead of reducing our dialogues to the content of a fortune cookie.  Let’s hope that this “revolution” will fade as fast as so many others have.