“i guess i think it rests evenly on both sides: as a reader, i must make time to read deeper, longer texts. as a writer, i must take the time to really think thru and craft what i am writing.”

It’s funny. In the last 2-3 years I’m doing a much better job at reading (which mostly has meant *not* reading, or reading much less with more attention). My writing hasn’t received any more attention though.

… yes, surely they go hand in hand ..and i agree, the web is great for information, surface and new ideas, pointers, creating connections - it’s not so good for taking the time to really understand longer-term implications. (both as a writer, and a reader).

@mtl3p: i guess i think it rests evenly on both sides: as a reader, i must make time to read deeper, longer texts. as a writer, i must take the time to really think thru and craft what i am writing.

but neither of those things exclude the more surface, immediate info inputs/outputs that the web allows. it just means that I have to make space in my life to do the other deeper stuff.

which is why i was uncomfortable with calvin’s “post” (!) about inchoate writing: i disagree with him, when he says:

“…I should want to bring forth no embryos at all if I could produce only premature ones; in fact, I should rather abandon them as abortions than bring them forth before their time…”

I think there is value in the premature embryo, especially if you consider it in the context of a huge swirl of ideas: someone else might gestate it and bring forth that idea in a fuller way. Or I might, a year or two later.

The mistake, for me, is thinking that the inchoate is *enough* (I mean, for me). The inchoate is valuable to me to the extent that it helps make something bigger, more important and more lasting.

of course the big problem is that the inchoate is just so much damned *easier.*

I was wondering - You saw that the title was a reference to the quote at the bottom, right? Ironically, Calvin self-published his first work and it fell like a rock. He “blogged it” in the parlance of the times. So both shame in doing what he says we shouldn’t do, and acceptance that it’s no different from the course that he took in his youth.

It’s not just a matter of focusing to produce “real material” but also remembering to save energy to take in meaning.

There is a historical trend towards the simplification of textual processes, the average newspaper 100 years ago was text heavy- and used a more complex vocabulary. The demands on a general intelligence were much greater than they are today. I can skim a blog and think I know what I am talking about, but the fact is that reading a book usually results in a more nuanced understanding.

So we may be making more stuff, but it is not necessarily true that our capacity to take it in, or deal with complexity of meaning is following our increased production.

but what of the young’uns, whose neural paths have been laid down not to catcher in the rye, but to hyper-info-overload, IM, email, facebook, cellphones, as well as grandtheftauto, WOW (and not to mention all the porn they could ever want). i think they will end up as very different humans - biologically.

what does that mean for the human race I wonder?

i don’t think you can go to a paid model for exactly the reason britannica and NYT can’t consider themselves information distributors …info is cheap and plentiful now, who’s going to pay when it’s free over there?

in any case the question isn’t whether newspapers are good and bloggers are bad (a la keen). the question is, how do we build media that is useful, given all the tools we have now?

stay tuned to find out, i guess.

that’s tricky, because the rewards/incentives are not clear.

did you see jaron lanier’s op ed recent (NYT i think) where he talks about the fact that the digital idealists were wrong… and that paid content must once again reign… well i fear little can be done to reverse the current momentum, but somehow we need to figure out better quality discovery (and production) facilities. this will be critical to avoid the destruction of culture that andrew keen has been going on about