Joi Ito has a great post about how Twitter is a lot like SMS — something that most of the developed world (and even some of the less developed world) has been used to for some time now, but which still strikes most of us in North American as a novelty.

“Twitter was funny for me because it was like the whole “laptop crowd” getting the “aha” that Europe and Asia had with SMS awhile back…

…the idea that the Internet isn’t about “cyberspace” that turns on when you open your laptop, but that the Internet was something that you could carry around with you and that could ping you when it needed you.”

I wonder what non-North American readers think of all the hand-wringing about how Twitter and similar apps are going to destroy our lives.