
The Long Thought - revorad
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2013/02/22/the_long_thought.html
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bhousel
_"I am learning something. The article I’m lightly consuming has become
bookmarked in my head, and if it comes up in casual conversation later in the
day, I can vigorously nod and say, “Yes, yes, I read that”. But I haven’t
really. I noted the shortest version of it; I can quote the simplest version
of it. I have a facade of the story and the illusion of knowledge. I miss long
thoughts."_

Ok, I miss them too. But I read Rand's blog post twice and I don't get the
connection. Forums were never about the long thought. Neither were BBSs. And
while the current forum mess of vBulletin/phpBB/etc could definitely use an
update, Discourse won't solve the "long thought" problem.

Long thoughts won't happen unless you make time for them. There's just no way
around it. For me, that means I spend more time on longform.org or reading
actual books, and less time on Facebook/Twitter/HackerNews.

Edit: yes, thanks for the correction, I did mean longform.org

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fusiongyro
Longform.com looks like a placeholder to me.

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revorad
I think bhousel meant <http://longform.org/>

There's also:

<http://longreads.com/>

<http://www.aldaily.com/>

<http://www.edge.org/>

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chrisduesing
It seems like there are two issues. The first, addressed by BBS's was small
communities have self enforced norms. This went away when forums were open to
the internet. How do we recapture small communities?

The second is the idea of a long form discussion. I don't think BBS's and
forums were ever about this. Actually, have we ever had a solution to this?
Where can someone write a long, thoughtful piece of prose and have long
thoughtful answers delivered back in the same place? Even blog comments tend
to be disorganized, devolve, and get side tracked.

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psadri
I have definitely noticed my attention span reduced over the years. I first
noticed ...

<pause>

what were we talking about?

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danso
I wonder if some day researchers were to conduct a longitudinal study on
Internet users, what they would find about how a person's quality of online
discussion changes over a decade (or two)? If that user started with USENET
and BBS, did they shun Twitter and Facebook, or did they embrace those
shorter-form, less deliberative discussions while continuing to engage in
substantial discussions in other forums? How frequently do users whose first
Internet conversations began on AIM/Twitter/Facebook migrate over to actual
discussion boards?

I hope the findings would show growth, but I'm not optimistic.

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nollidge
I believe I detect a tacit assumption that there's a correlation between
quality and message length. Long-form encourages repetitive rumination,
digression, and purple prose at least as much as it does detail & ornate
linguistic aesthetics. And short-form encourages wit and clarity as least as
much as haste and inattention.

