I make no assumption about the average - or at least I don't in what I wrote. Though I can understand where one might read that in.... :-> My actual assumption

I make no assumption about the average - or at least I don't in what I wrote. Though I can understand where one might read that in.... :-> My actual assumption is that long-form writers have always been and likely always will be a definite minority - hence our value in many situations. (A necessary step to attaining that value is, not so ironically, learning to summarize and to "hook", because like it or not, even if we deal only with other long-formers, we all have so much on our plates that we cannot devote sufficient time to reading through everything each other writes to decide whether it is worthwhile to read. We need abstracts, filters, curation, etc. It's not ironic because we have to have had the hard slog first to get the long form before we tweet, bullet, etc.) My other assumption - more of a grumpy old man conclusion, really - is that the rise and acceptance of the bullet and the tweet and the SMS has given voice to a great many who otherwise would be excluded from many serious conversations. Yes, there are gems in their output, but so few and far between that their output rarely rises to the level of discourse and rarely becomes impactful or lasting. On the whole, intellectually I think we are worse off for the additional noise, but socially better off for the addition of their voices. Overall, we are slightly better off, and if that means we need to work harder to filter for the signal, so be it, better to have more voices than fewer. At least socially we are better off. As a whole. But a great many specific communities are worse off because of the minimal level of effort required to inject one's meanginglessness and laziness into serious discussions. Witness "me too"/"this"/"+1"/etc. in comments, tweets, emails, etc. So I'm happier human being because so many people are able to join in global conversations, but I'm grumpier subject matter expert because too many are wandering about my enclave leaving mud everywhere.