Neuroscience and Twitter

Whether you like or understand why, Twitter has become a legitimate forum for business communications. In this month's section on whole brain communications, an excerpt of a blog by Moses Ma called The Tao of Innovation. 

"Perhaps Twitter is even part of our evolutionary process, like that initial adaptation we now call neuro-plasticity during that first evolutionary venture, during that first mutation of brain cells? For those who don't feel like looking it up on wikipedia, neuro-plasticity relates to how the brain learns, by adding or removing connections, or adding cells. Researchers have discovered that norepinephrine, a neuro-adrenaline dubbed "the stress hormone", increases brain plasticity. But that's kind of obvious... when you're life's threatened, of course your brain is going to want to remember everything that's just about to happen.

"Perhaps our brains, in a similar way, require stress and pressure to expand its capacities, and so we are now being pushed by new applications like Twitter to increase our base processing speeds – enabling a global network of brains that advance in lock step with the increasing speed of computer processors and search engines? Like the boundary-less twitterverse, where exactly is the boundary between our brains and the Internet?"

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Royal (editing) Liberties

Last month's post on Prince Charles' Rainforest Project Report got a good run on Twitter and a couple of comments on my blog. 

Since I always feature thoughts on effective business writing here, I'll highlight a before and after edit on the Prince's work.  Oh, did I say the Prince's work?  No doubt he uses a ghostwriter -- maybe I'll apply for the job. 

The summary as written: “Reducing tropical deforestation will be vital if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change and preserve important ecosystem functions. An Emergency Package is needed to provide substantial funding to Rainforest nations to help them address the drivers of deforestation and embark on alternative economic development paths. Rainforests cool the planet, regulate the water cycle and provide a home to countless species; it is right and essential that the world pays for these services.”

My rewrite: Rainforests cool the planet, regulate the water cycle and provide a home to countless species. To preserve the world’s ecosystem functions and avoid catastrophic climate change, we must reduce tropical deforestation. The world should provide funding to Rainforest nations to help them address the drivers of deforestation and embark on alternative economic development paths. Since the rainforests provide “services” essential to planetary life, justice dictates that those services be compensated.