3 ms·
I’d say the internet has obsoleted earlier forms of communication. Twitter and the use of the phone keyboard as many people’s main input device has mainstreamed
by Mediterraneo10 6y ago
I’d say the internet has obsoleted earlier forms of communication. Twitter and the use of the phone keyboard as many people’s main input device has mainstreamed a discourse of extremely short communications, “snackable content” has diminished appetite for longer writing (which is often referred to as a daunting “Long Read” even if it is merely the length of an ordinary magazine article from a few decades ago).
If you examine some of the late-18th-century pamphlets created by social agitators and revolutionaries, they were often extremely dense text with elaborate argumentation. That kind of writing would not have the same impact on the public today; most of the people given such a pamphlet would bristle at having to read all that.
- eightysixfour 6y agoWhile I understand what you are saying, there was never a guarantee people would want to read what you wrote, just that you could write it.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoFor an 18th-century pamphlet writer, there was something of a guarantee that at least the people sympathetic to his cause would read the pamphlet. Today, even few among the target audience would read such writing, simply because internet communications have made it seem “too long”.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> I’d say the internet has obsoleted earlier forms of communication. Well, given that I've seen Devin Nunes on Fox News arguing about how it is now impossible for Republicans to communicate, you aren't alone. On the other hand, it clearly is possible to get messages out other than via venues controlled by the tech firms at issue.