Twitter officially has 100 million

active users.

Keep in mind that those hundred

million users didn’t even have the option of tweeting their

thoughts and activities before March 2006. So in the past

five-and-a-half years, the number of people consuming technology,

adapting it to their needs and exchanging ideas has exploded.

With that increase comes great

benefits. After Johannes Gutenberg invented metal movable type for

the printing press in the 1450s, books became more easily printed

than copied by hand. Books and pamphlets proliferated. A few

centuries later, Britain and her American colonies became famous

for their hesitancy to censor printed material.

Then, with our independence and

Constitution, we enshrined a free press and the dissemination of

information as part of our political institutions. From the

beginning, newspapers were used to project ideas about politics

into the public world. Nearly every newspaper published “The

Federalist Papers,” that legendary effort to convince people to

adopt the Constitution.

As a party system developed between

Federalists and Democratic-Republicans developed, leading figures

in each party chartered newspapers to provide vehicles for their

ideas. “The Aurora,” for instance, vigorously attacked the Adams

administration, and the “Gazette of the United States” supported

the Federalists.

We still have newspapers. And while

broadcast television and radio has been required in the past by the

“Fairness Doctrine” to give voice to multiple viewpoints, cable and

subscription channels and stations have proliferated. Fox News can

support Republicans all it wants; MSNBC can support Democrats all

it wants. If Glenn Beck wants to make his own channel people can

subscribe to, he can, and he can put whatever content on it he

wants.

And now you can do the same. With

Twitter, Facebook, and blogging sites such as WordPress, Tumblr and

Blogger, you can too.

Whatever idea you have, you can

proclaim it. If enough people catch on, it may change your world.

The Iranians found that out, in 2009. After protests surrounding

their disputed presidential election, they were able to coordinate

protests and information about police repression using Twitter. One

of the main ways we heard about those activities, if we did at all,

was through tweets.

With that ability to communicate so

easily comes a responsibility to communicate well — and about

things that actually matter. We don’t care that you’re pulling into

the grocery store parking lot, or that you’ve moved on to paying

for your groceries. What would be good to know, though, is where

the next community concert by a local band is going to be. Or maybe

you should tell us where a political candidate’s rally will be, or

what he or she will say at it.

The power to communicate offers both

the power to give thoughtful, useful information and the power to

give nonsensical drivel no one cares about. Choose wisely.