twittering tomato
It must be the season for oddball science studies to be published. The latest one is about the development of a method to let plants send text messages. The idea is that a sensor attached to the plant could let you know when the plant needs something. With technology like this, soon you’ll never need to step into your garden again to check on your plants. Somebody tell me why this is a good idea.
Will it be long before tomato plants have their own Twitter accounts? Actually, the future is already here. And in fact the future happened way back in June of 2008. That was when a tomato plant in Boston began to tweet. (If there are piles of poodles with MySpace and Facebook pages, why shouldn’t a tomato twitter? A tomato plant’s keyboarding skills are probably no worse than a poodle’s, so it shouldn’t require any more assistance from its owner.)
This particular plant’s tweets didn’t last two weeks. It was a stunt of course. But if you were to take the tweets seriously and do a forensic study back through the tweets, it’s pretty clear what killed the plant: overwatering.
June 18 2009 05:15 am | Categories: rambles |
tina on 18 Jun 2009 at 6:55 am #
Definitely a headline eye catcher with the word ‘twittering’ in it. This thing has gotten so big! I personally do hope that tomatoes do not start twittering though.
Pomona Belvedere on 19 Jun 2009 at 4:34 pm #
When I was first putting up my blog I ran into that hilarious plant text-message site. However if my tomatoes (or anything else) start twittering, I’m closing my own Twitter account. I like the regular forms of plant communication a lot more. More sophisticated, more subtle, more beautiful. And that’s coming from a fan of Twitter!
lostlandscape on 20 Jun 2009 at 1:26 pm #
I suspect your plants would have more interesting things to say, Tina.
Pomona, Twitter does some things well. But since I don’t want my plants organizing mass protests against my autocratic control over the garden, I don’t think the plants will be getting their own accounts.