This article is more than 5 years old.

In my days as a thrift store junkie I had an unproven theory about the ability to predict social, economic and fashion trends by shopping at a thrift store. I noticed then that it was common to find multiple identical but otherwise unique items that had been donated to the thrift store at the same time ( for a while I owned several gaggia espresso makers that I obtained this way).

I had a similar experience at this conference seeing the use of Twitter, mobile tech, and structured conference tags and hearing from different people on how this is a good case study of the utility of the abstracted action of SMS.

Not only we’re people using Twitter to document, seek information, ask questions and critique content they were doing it in a lot of different ways and with some different goals. More than once I overheard or participated in a conversation about how this specific use was a good example of how technologies can be purposed and combined in ways that support unexpected actions.