On my recent administrative trip to Madrid, I had the weekend mostly free and spent a day in Segovia, which I’d never visited before. What struck me most is the way in which the city seems to preserve, better than anywhere else I’ve visited, the sense of space that would have been operative in the medieval town.
I’m not going to the big medieval studies conference at Kalamazoo this year (actually, I’ve never been, but that’s another post). In the past, I’ve followed along with the few relevant sessions with more and less attention and interest and fury via audience members live-tweeting the talks; that is, reporting, with varying degrees of skill, on what has been said by the speaker. There is a presumption of live-tweeting at the big medieval conferences; that is to say that the general consensus in medieval social media is that speakers who don’t want their talks live-tweeted must actively opt out. I’ve never liked that formulation, but I’ve found that in the last year it has made me increasingly queasy as I have followed conferences through that medium that I could not attend in person.
So I’m opting out of opt-out live tweeting: I will no longer follow the Twitter stream of live-tweeted conferences; ideally, I would go as far as to say that I will not knowingly participate in conferences where opt-out live-tweeting is the norm, although I don’t know how practical a stance that is. If nothing else, I’m curious about the value of putting an opinion that runs counter to the prevailing culture out there. Is it possible I’m not the only one who doesn’t like the current state of affairs?
