Your Twitter rant about the wait at Starbucks – now in the Library of Congress!

Even the Library of Congress has recognized the social and historical (if not hysterical) value of all the tweeting that we’ve been doing. It has announced that it will keep a digital archive of every public tweet since Twitter began in 2006. Widely reported and discussed, from the Washington Post to Yahoo! News, this is an action with broad consequences. On the one hand, powerful filtering tools allow access to, and analysis of, a mountain of data on a myriad of topics. As Ben Schneiderman, computer science professor at the University of Maryland, comments in the Post article, “This is a remarkable resource that for the first time . . . allows us to grasp the mood of the culture minute by minute.” On the other hand, those snippy little comments about the person in front of you in line will now be preserved forever. That’s something to think about while you sip your latte.