John C. Dvorak Capitulates: Joins – then dominates Twitter

I still find it hard to believe. This is probably an event as miraculous as walking on water and turning water into wine – or as improbable as Steve Ballmer buying the new iMac. I’m talking about everybody’s favorite cranky geek John C. Dvorak (“Dvorak dot org slash blog“) who finally stopping dissing Twitter and joined up.

A scant twenty days later, he’s amassed an army of 10,836 Twits (as of this writing) following his every word. Listening to him on the latest episode of Podcast guru Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech (aka TWIT, no relation to Twitter), he proclaims a new gospel.

“I find Twitter to be very useful,” he says. “It’s a valuable tool in my arsenal.”

To see for yourself, follow Dvorak’s real-time musings here. It’s a real find, like finding Salman Rushdie posting in your favorite forum, or on #IRC.

Indeed, the often curmudgeonly Mr. Dvorak has taken to the Twitterverse with the same enthusiasm as a Filipino politician indulging in corruption. His postings – or “tweets” as we call them – are often a wealth of pithy commentary and useful links. After all it was his take on the controversial Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair pictorial that first drew my attention to it.

“I’m totally outraged by this story: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/… and the notion of “Posing TOPLESS with your chest covered!” WHAT??”

The Real Dvorak has proven to be much more entertaining than the fake John Dvorak account that I previously subscribed to.

It wasn’t too long ago that Dvorak had thought of Twitter as just another Web 2.0 truckload of merde. In a column on PC Magazine written as recently as June 2007, Dvorak dismissed Twitter as a treasure-trove of banal chatter:

Is mundane chatter worth keeping?

Anyone who thought early blogging and its offshoots were exercises in the banal should have a look at Twitter and its clones. They provide evidence that the public at large (or at least the nerds at large) has no life.

Twitter is a network of, uh, twitterers who do little more than post minute-by-minute accounts of their daily activities. I cannot understand why anyone would want to do this, or why anyone would want to read these posts.

In the past, I would just go off on the subject, as I did with blogging and podcasting when they first appeared. Since then, I’ve become a blogger and a podcaster and have been rebuked for my earlier opinions. On the Internet, they never forget.

So I’m thinking that I should be more analytical in a positive way. I say this even though this is one fad I cannot imagine wasting my time on.

How the mighty have fallen. A very warm welcome to the Twitterverse, John.

You’re Not Imagining It, The Ayson Chronicles Really Was a Magazine Column In The Early 90′s

Some of you who are old and grizzly enough may find an odd sense of Deja Vu at this site’s title. Well as it turns out, you’re not crazy (even if you think you are). It really was the name of my old column at the old PC Digest. I’ve finally written up the “About” section of this blog which provides some insight into why it is what it is. So check it out.