Pigs – I mean Tweets – in Space!

Once, our ancestors drew on cave walls. They carved their thoughts into clay, onto turtle shells, into rock. The Egyptians gave us the first paper and ink. Guttenberg gave us the printing press. With the ease of our daily communication, we often forget those forced to labor before us.

When we write, our own imprint is made on history. 2010, they will say, was the time of word processors and blogs, of text messaging and Facebook. They will read in their history ebooks, that January 22, 2010 was the date that the first Tweet was sent from space.

It’s true. Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer wrote to earthlings back home:

“Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station -- the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s”

Aside from my first instinctive gut reactions to the fact that history is being written in emoticons and three letter words abbreviated to one, how amazing is that? We live in a world that isn’t easily impressed, I know. It takes Tiger Woods (and his car) being attacked by golf clubs to turn our heads. It takes not just the Gosselin’s eight kids or Kate’s bad hairdo, but also their messy divorce to captivate the public’s attention.

But just ponder for a moment the ability to communicate with one another, across a room, outside the globe, passed on through time. Maybe I should just turn back on American Idol to find a new fascination, but for this moment, I’m amazed and have an itch to send a text message to Mars.