i would prefer raising the bar when it comes to quality of information

Me too. But I suspect you know that. We are elitist pigs, give it up and wear the label proudly.

Democracy is good for government. But sorry, "democratizers," when it comes to literature, art, journalism, medicine, science, engineering, cinema....I like me some meritocracy, democracy there is called "lowest common denominator." Life is too short to spend the whole time sorting out a lot of crap input.

a 2004 op-ed that grows ever more meaningful:

Walden at 150: What Would Thoreau Think of the 24-Hour News Cycle?

In his time at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau periodically returned to Concord, Mass., and when he did, the village seemed to him like a "great news room." After days alone, he found himself surrounded by gossip on all sides, from the idle talk of his neighbors to the frivolous reports in the newspapers. Thoreau was not immune to the appeal of gossip, which he saw as "really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs." But he worried that society was being dulled by its fascination with trivial events. "Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner," Thoreau lamented, "but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, 'What's the news?'....

But it is Thoreau's views on news that have the most contemporary feel. He believed that sensationalist newspaper articles - the mid-19th century equivalent of local television news - were a distraction. "If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned we never need read of another," he writes. "If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?"

Thoreau was by no means opposed to news consumption, but he believed society should focus intently on the news that mattered....

(Back in my parents' day, people who weren't reporters who chased ambulances to get an adrenalin high of seeing news happening were looked down upon as having a sort of pyschological problem; you could wait for the morning paper. Now lots of news blog type people look down on folks who enjoy following some of the stranger celeb court cases, and while I don't think it's the greatest thing in the world, at least it expands contextual thinking and attention span.)

Let's go back to Twitter. I am sure it's a great replacement tool for conference calls and staff meetings, just like email was. Which brings me back to A.D.D. People have tired of email because too many people use it to write longer "letters," rather than one liners, which requires them to spend time and think on their own again. They want to chatter, share a community feeling without working at it, and not think. You know, like most staff meetings, badly run, with participants ill-prepared.

The text limit, it makes fo chattering, it's "brainstorming" like they used to do on Madison Avenue, or the constant chatter of wheeler dealers on cell phones in Hollywood, "Entourage" style, that's all it is. Making a communal brain with A.D.D., but without anyone adding any discipline or system of any kind to that brain, and few interested in going back and doing "follow-up" on all the chatterings. Might as well move a little further down the line and just attach EEG's to everyone's head and transmit the output. It's only revolutionary in that it's further removing any system or context or discipline from thought which we've been trying to do since the Enlightenment. Since before complext verbal language, we've always been able to chat and gossip, nothing revolutionary there.

Let me add, text messages work fine for political action, and people can chose to read them now or later. There's no new benefit in that vein in Twitter that I can see.