It's true. Or so I heard. Not only did I miss that boat, I'm late to the party on another front: the linked article was published four months ago. Typical me.
It seems that this is partially attributable to the fact that technology is enabling shorter attention spans: with an infinite amount of information being delivered to us in bite sized chunks and myriad of tools for us to communicate with those around us (also in bite sized chunks), we may be losing our abilities to focus. There's a reason why tl; dr is frequently used nowadays. Look no further than the rest of this post (to be honest, it's not that long - I think).
But there's something to be said about the written word in a form longer than a tweet or status update, when read at the right pace. There's a rhythm and flow involved in writing that goes two ways. The author organizes and paces their thoughts. If the reader goes too fast, they never make the connection with the author. Read too slow with days/weeks/months separating a return to the material, and even those with great memories lose the thread. But when the pace is just right, we become immersed in the thoughts and ideas of the writer, mentally agreeing or disagreeing with any commentary and coming up with our own arguments. With today's technology, we can communicate directly with the author, creating a dialog between with writer and reader. The role of the author is to simply frame the topic of conversation.
So, yes, this is primarily the umpteenth time I've created an outlet for thoughts I don't really have a forum for. But any and all feedback, comments, and rebuttals are welcome. Let's see where this goes.
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