I am positive that when the first technicians who built the first servers of the internet imagined the great potential it had, I am sure they did not forsee the immense impact social networking has had on our current generation. A couple years back, instead of writing thoughts in a book or a diary or something, people wanted to share their self expression and ideas, but how could they share it in a secure way? It started with blogs where an individual can post whatever they wanted and if famous enough or had a large enough fan base, was able to have their opinions heard. However people who felt they were recognized may have wanted to know who they were recognized by and this call for a two way interaction started. Soon people began able to comment on each other blogs and the cyberworld was beginning to develop. This idea of interacting through a post on a domain soon expanded to the creaton of forums and then too the social networks we have today.
Social networks were designed based off this principle of sharing individual ideas or moments and also to respond back to them. I feel Twitter would be an interesting and effective way of exploring Huck Finn because with the large amount of people in this project and the ability to instantaneous reflect an idea, my peers and I will be to analyze the novel whenever able too. No longer is the discussion confined to a 1 hr and 40 minute classroom discussion but can be taking place at any day and at any time. The fact that we also have to retweet our peers tweets or other miscallaneous tweets also helps draw in outside sources to help reflect on Huckleberry Finn
I honestly have never been to into Twitter because i felt other social networks like Facebook was more applicable to me but the hashtag system is indeed unique. It is interesting to see what the Hf hashtags are and how at the end of the unit we can click on each hashtag and even see a list of all tweets with that tag. Not only are we able to share, and respond to each others idea, but now these ideas are categorized in chronological order to further see how our ideas progress. No more do we live in a time of book clubs when websites like Twitter allows us to create a book network where enthusiasts are not contstrained to express.
-Zachary Losak