I am at your disposal

So I got a (rather breathless) email just now about some argument that's going on in Twitterland that involves something I wrote. The emailer asked for a defense, but I'm afraid I can't provide one because I'm not on Twitter. Which doesn't, of course, mean that people can't complain about me, it's there their prerogative. Part of the appeal of Twitter is that it offers a gated community, one in which you are free to make public address but one in which you can also utilize the follower system to only listen to people you're interested in talking to. There's nothing sinister about that. Some people use Twitter to engage with all comers, some only with friends, and that's fine. But it does make explicit a certain asymmetry of access.

If anyone wants to actually engage with my ideas, that's what blogs are for. But you have to grant me the laurel of being important enough to talk about in the first place!