With all the discussion about marketing -- Twitter is fun, but I'd rather do it than read one more think-piece about What It All Means -- there seems to be comparatively less talk about the actual content of what we're selling. Do ideas requiring more than 140 characters have a future among the young, the well-off, the "connected?" Will more evidence emerge suggesting that the medium really is the message, that the rapid-fire stream of info-bits that characterizes today's content delivery could actually change the way our brains process information? Are we trading in considered thought for a new model, a kind of broad but not-too-deep savviness?
HUP Executive Editor for the Humanities Lindsay Waters is a well-known proponent of "slow reading." It's not a concept set up in stodgy opposition to an emergent online world, but rather a technique for preserving what's of value in the humanistic tradition. Waters explains his advocacy in a new interview from ABC Radio International (that's Australia, by the way, not "our" ABC). Would Nietzsche have been proud?
