"On-Boarding" His Holiness on Twitter

For most of us who had an opportunity to meet with His Holiness, the intent of the meeting was to “On-Board” The Dalai Lama on Twitter.

Twitter is a newish phenomenon that is used by millions of people for social, marketing and business purposes. But, the most essential and important use of Twitter, I think, is as a means of cultivating and disseminating information.

When we were presented with the opportunity to meet HHDL, my fiancée Jerry Murdock very quickly had the idea that HHDL should be on Twitter so he could communicate ‘in the moment’ with the millions of people around the world.

Twitter is a tool used on computers on the internet, but even more widely as a tool on the mobile web - cell phones and smart phones, iphone - and in the most simplest form, as a text messaging system with the short code 40404 on any cell phone.

In many developing nations, like India or Africa, the people do not have access to the Internet, but they do have cell phones, even in the most remote areas. Potentially, a person with a cell phone in India could receive a message directly from HHDL via Twitter and then “Retweet” it, or send it out again, so eventually the message could make it into Tibet where the people are particularly starved for a connection to their exiled spiritual leader.

Twitter could potentially be a way around the routine censorship of information in places like China and other areas in the world where the Internet is monitored and regulated; places where people are not free to speak their minds for fear of imprisonment or death. This was certainly the case with the recent revolution in Iran; Twitter played a very important role in organizing people and getting the word out about what was happening.

The founders of Twitter are proponents of the free flow of information in whatever form, and for that reason, the Twitter Team enthusiastically helped introduce the Dalai Lama to the service.
During our meeting, Evan Williams, a founder of Twitter, was able to personally show HHDL how to use Twitter on a new Blackberry that was set up and donated for this purpose.

HHDL said technology is very important to help people connect and to realize that we are all one and we are all connected. He said, “This is a very good thing.”

According to Jerry Murdock, who has spent his entire career following and investing in technology companies,
“Technology is neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It depends how you use it.”
I think this statement is true on many levels. I have heard many parents in general lamenting the loss of connection with their children who are constantly connected to others through Facebook or texting, but not necessarily present at home or out with the family. For many people, this is seen as a negative consequence of mobile technology, in particular (negative for the parents, but seen as a positive to the kids who can tune out annoying parents, for example;-)
But, take that same technology and apply it in this instance to the possibility of His Holiness connecting with millions of people instantaneously through Twitter, Facebook or texting and it seems like a very positive adaption of the same technology. In the case of parents and kids, the technology creates distance, and in the case of HHDL, or even President Obama, it creates a sense of connection between people.

It is humans who are attaching value, good or bad, to these mechanisms. I think in the case of Twitter, there is an enormous potential for good, through the instantaneous free flow of information and through the potential for more first person accounts of news and information. As Jerry Murdock often says, “Would you rather get your news from Rupert Murdoch or from your own sources that you trust?”

Twitter takes some getting used to and it certainly isn’t excessively user friendly at first. Most people I know have a Twitter account, but are not active users. It takes some times to curate the content on Twitter and to find information that is valuable to you. There is a lot of junk on Twitter, just like there is all over the web. Once you start finding relevant people to “follow”, who you trust, Twitter is an invaluable tool for communication and for gathering information for people who are high and low tech all over the world.

It is my hope that The Dalai Lama and his staff will nurture the seed we planted this weekend and start using Twitter in the near future. I, for one, will be one of his first followers.

(Look for a verified account, as there are many impersonators out there.)