If you publish content on the Web (or even if you don’t) then you should read this rant from Warren Ellis about the current Burst Culture of the Web. If you don’t have time to read it then at least take this point away from it …
The hurdle to credible publishing on the web, now, is the nine dollars it costs to buy a domain name from GoDaddy, which can be mapped on to a free Tumblr or Blogger space.
Heck if you don’t care what your URL is you can even save the nine bones. Also, kind of related is Evan Williams post about deciding what “game” to be in.
June 3, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I’m a huge Ellis fan, and even if I wasn’t, I would recognize him as a prescient voice when it comes to internet communication. Heed his words.
I agree that surfing is about burst culture, but I have to say I’m bothered by the fact that our attention spans demand that all information be reduced to snippets. While this is an undeniable fact, it still sucks… like Ellis, I often enjoy dense, fibrous, reads in a print format, mainly because they can’t be beaten in terms of sheer volume of information presented. What they lack in speed and expediency, they make up for in depth. Sadly, print format is going the way of the dodo… I really believe our generation doesn’t have the patience for any information that isn’t reduced to “blurb” format.
June 3, 2007 at 4:32 pm
There is hope still. I quote Ellis again …
I like consuming both bursts and long trips. I do prefer bursts online but I have read many in-depth articles in my browser. If it’s good content it doesn’t matter what the media is where it lives.
June 4, 2007 at 11:18 am
Too true. And Ellis does make some good points about attention span… some people still must have the patience to read if heavy-ass hardcover novels can still make the bestseller list.