The beauty of freedom of speech is that anyone can share with everyone else how little they understand of the world around them.

This is especially true for the ongoing avalanche of statements and announcements of all sorts by honchos who really don’t seem to get that online and offline are two different worlds where different rules apply. See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/media/24content.html or http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/16/financial-times-lionel-barber for two recent examples of how even big media is not immune to this.

In both cases, Big Old Media is trying to fit square pegs into round holes. And like less-gifted children in kindergarten do; if the block does not go in by itself, you take a big, mean hammer and wallop the block until it either fits in the hole or breaks - whichever comes first.

Sometimes, however, solutions can be so much simpler, so much more elegant. And of course the most intriguing ones comes from where you would least expect them.

In a recent post, no more than a single paragraph in its blog section, the New York Times (NYT) said the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) would use Twitter to provide live programme notes for an outdoor performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No 6 at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. The twitter messages would highlight "the various countryside sights and sounds — rattling carriage wheels, singing birds — that Beethoven was paying homage to in the symphony," NYT said. Conductor Emil de Cou was quoted as calling the Twitter comments "an adult musical pop-up book written for first timers and concert veterans alike."

The performance is to take place at the Feline Centre, which includes an outdoor amphitheatre with covered, in-house seating and uncovered, lawn seating.

The idea of using Twitter, or any other service like it, in this way, to the generation that grew up online, is like "duh". But to the honchos that are still wondering why the big square thingy will not go into the round thingy, even if you hit it really, really hard with the biggest, meanest hammer-thingy you can find, it is unlikely to make much sense.

The idea of NSO and conductor De Cou shows an ablility to adapt, and, hopefully, survive in a world that will change even faster tomorrow than it did today. As for Big Old Media, let us hope someone hides the really big hammer before things break.

The NSO comments can be followed live from anywhere in the world via http://twitter.com/nsoatwolftrap.