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The problem isn't that people are writing less than before, it's that so many are doing it so poorly such that we're overwhelmed with information and easily pro
by sliksal02 14y ago
The problem isn't that people are writing less than before, it's that so many are doing it so poorly such that we're overwhelmed with information and easily prone to overlooking the stories that are worth telling and are still being told. The author alludes to this: if the Federalist Papers were published today, it would be very easy to dismiss them as tl;dr and move on to the next update. There's no quality control anymore.
- breckinloggins 14y agoThe quality control exists, but it's become ad-hoc and decentralized. I think this will ultimately be a very good thing, though we are still experiencing severe learning pains. In many ways, sites like Hacker News and reddit serve as democratized curators of quality content. If quality content is rewarded with high karma, this hopefully rewards more people to produce that content. Even when a site like reddit gets bogged down in the low-form entertainment of the masses (which, admit it or not, we all comprise at some point in our days), the site itself forms a "bud" off the main branch with a return to quality [1]. In the end, I think we're both right. There's more writing than ever before (good), and there's worse writing than ever before (bad). We as a society must figure out not only how to do quality control in this new environment, but also to recognize when we're merely being snooty (in public, while laughing hilariously at inane facebook updates in private). [1] see http://www.reddit.com/r/depthhub http://www.reddit.com/r/depthhub