Latin for tweet?

I'm not on twitter myself, and haven't really contemplated what the Latin for to tweet might be. The editorial in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald suggested frigere, in this short post script:

THE 18th-century philosopher Bishop Berkeley thought things existed only if they were perceived. In all modesty we wish to propose a variant of this doctrine: people exist only if they tweet, or esse est frigere, for those who prefer their axioms in questionable Latin. The basis for this is our report that social scientists have plotted the mood of the whole world from Twitter.

After examining half a billion tweets and tallying up when people tweet positive and negative words, they conclude that most of us wake up happy, then things go downhill through the work day until knock-off time, when tweeters resume their early bounciness. This astonishing finding is all well and good, but what about people who don't tweet? Might their mood swings be in the opposite direction? Here our axiom springs into action. Either they are the same as the twitterers, in which case they are superfluous, or they are different but undetectable, in which case who cares? ... All together now: frigo ergo sum. I tweet, therefore I am.

I was a bit puzzled by this verb, and admit I had to look it up to see what it meant. Here's the definition according to William Whitaker's Words (I'm on holidays and don't have a real dictionary with me):

frigo, frigere, frixi, frictus: to roast, parch, fry

I'm not sure how they chose this verb, given that definition. Perhaps there's another meaning not given on-line, or perhaps there's some joke I'm not getting. In either case I would have thought pipiare or titiare (which both describe the sounds birds make) would have been a better choice. Any other suggestions?

UPDATE: unsurprisingly, someone else has already given this some thought. Here are the Rogue Classicist's (who is actually on twitter and has much more authority than I on such matters) suggestions. While I was raeding this I was also distracted by this post, which reminded me of why I love Boris Johnson so much.

an experiment

not for memory, but reminder

I came across this footnote the other day in a book on the history of humanity's developing understanding of the universe:

In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates recounts an old story of how the legendary King Thamus of Egypt had declined the Theuth's offer to teach his subjects how to write. "What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder," says King Thamus. "And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows." This remains one of the most prophetic denunciations of the peril of literacy ever enunciated - although of course, it is thanks to the written word that we know of it.

(Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris, p.31)

It strikes me that much the same thing could be said of computers - that rather than helping people to think, they encourage shortcuts, shallow learning and laziness. This is something I see in my classrooms all the time, and which concerns me. On the other hand, the amount of knowledge has increased incredibly since Plato's day, and it would be impossible and probably undesirable to return to a reliance on memory alone. And indeed despite the kernel of truth of Plato's words, you would have to be particularly obtuse to deny that the written word initiated the growth of and sophistication* of human civilisation* and has been essential for many of the great achievements* of humankind. No doubt computer technology is in the same category. In years to come (and perhaps already) people will wonder how we ever did without it.

(*I realise that these are problematic concepts.)

For some more interesting reflections on computers see this post, over on Michael Gilleland's blog.

(And yes, I get the irony of blogging about this topic.)