Reading news isnt necessarily recreational for everyone. Just because someone want to stay informed about current events in a concise manner, doesn't mean they don't like to read. You can consume the news quickly and take your time reading something else that you enjoy.
> You can consume the news quickly and take your time reading something else that you enjoy.
This isn't meant to disparage either your point or the idea being discussed, but there are some things that cannot be condensed without destroying their meaning.
As just one example, on reading the history of the Vietnam War, it becomes obvious that those who moved us into the conflict simply didn't understand Vietnam and ought to have studied longer and deeper before committing troops to an unwinnable war fought over a misunderstood principle. This is obvious now, but only to those willing to read more, and deeper, to the degree that they actually understand the topic.
This obviously doesn't apply to everything -- many topics can be safely condensed -- but the risk remains that an issue will be condensed to a state of incomprehensibility with the best of intentions.
For another example, it is the attractiveness of of tl;dr that make many people think science is a collection of facts. Or that Frankenstein is the monster, not his maker. Or that "decimated" means completely destroyed. Or that "literally" means figuratively. And so forth. Most worthwhile ideas can't be meaningfully compressed past a certain point.
That's what I assumed, but what happens if I'm in a conversation and my knowledge is only as long as the little blurb I just read?
Ultimately it ends up devaluing my conversation and could make for an awkward experience. Better to be oblivious to something rather than semi-educated. So if I'm honest and say "no, I haven't read that," the person I'm speaking with can fill me in and we can have a great talk.
There's a little term I came across a few years ago that's brilliant: info snacking. Paralleled with a healthy diet (food), too much "snacking" can result in poor health. Same thing here: without substance you're but a balloon waiting to be popped.
I see your point but what I'm trying to do with my site Skim That[1] is actually convey nearly all the information in a source story. So, if you just read the summary and someone else reads the source, you should both be able to have a conversation on the same level.
I'm actually a little worried about this trend to make things shorter and more dense. When does it stop? Twitter's character limit was ludicrous at first, but now people applaud its length. I even notice in myself how short of an attention span I have nowadays. If a comment is too long, I'll read half of it and skip the rest. I don't delve anymore, I just skim. I'm wondering how this is affecting us on a larger, longer scale.
I think (or hope) we're learning to compartmentalize our information consumption. As someone who's been involved in "user generated digital content" since before the web, I've had a front row seat for the evolutionary process that, to me, is logical but to others feels accelerated if not sudden.
I see it as our brains adapting to the information overburden that we feel is being imposed on us. As a result, those learning to adapt are creating four categories of information:
(1) Stuff I need to know
(2) Stuff I should know
(3) Stuff I'd like to know
(4) Stuff I don't care about
Content shortening/summarization helps augment our ability to quantify what fits into 2, 3, and 4. If I read the first paragraph of a traditionally written journalistic piece, I know where it fits before the second paragraph. But a precious small percentage of online content is written in that manner -- first paragraph giving the reader enough information to know what to do next. (There's a whole rant on our lost ability to write, but that's for later.) So since a smaller and smaller percentage of potentially viable information is written traditionally, automated summaries (should) help us decide sooner where something fits.
Does that make sense or am I just spewing madness?
