KevinDonahue.net

Twitter is not the new anything. Twitter is nothing but the new Twitter: that very rare thing, an entirely new genre of service, like blogs, social networks, and way back in the day, portals all were. It’s its own thing, and trying to analogize it to some other service is as useful as calling airplanes flying buses: sure, they sort of look like buses with wings, but that doesn’t mean you use them the same way.

TWITTER: Get up to the minute reports on what celebrities, who have no idea who you are, had for breakfast

FACEBOOK: Get up to the minute reports on what people you haven’t talked to in almost 20 years are having for lunch.

America’s relative decline in global affairs has been foretold many times, but it never quite seems to happen. Today, the rest of the world is looking to the United States to pull it out of a recession (or depression), even though many countries also blame us for having started it. The truth is this: The worse things go for the world as a whole, the more the United States gains in relative power and influence. Maybe that sounds counterintuitive, but it has happened before. After the first and second world wars left many other parts of the world in devastation, the United States rose in relative stature. It fell in standing, at least arguably, during the years between 1989 and 2007, when the world as a whole was enjoying unprecedented prosperity and ­liberty.