Is it me or is the world’s attention span shrinking to dangerously low levels?
We started by not having time for books. So we blogged. But at least people could comment on blogs – and you would get some great exchanges of ideas, information and encouragement. But that all seemed a little cumbersome so we went with Twitter. 140 characters seemed manageable. But there wasn’t much interaction – sure, you could retweet or reply. But it wasn’t the same.
Facebook is king in our world of shrinking attention spans. Short posts and you can still reply. Of course, our replies are usually of the “like” variety but at least it’s something!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m on FB. I tweet. I even blog. I’m not being a hater. I’m just saying our lives might be a little richer if we engaged with ideas that can’t be shrunk into 140 character. Anyone agree? Feel like being old-school and commenting on a blog? Would love to know what you think.
This is really interesting. I feel like some of the biggest exchange of ideas where way back in the old days of philosopher/apologetics with huge figures like Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Descartes, Locke, and more. Correct me if I’m wrong, but they didn’t always write books, did they? Often times they would just write essays, longer than blogs but shorter than books. And at times these essays might even be sort of written to each other and in response to someone else’s essay. So my question is why does everyone feel like they need to have their own book nowadays? Where have all the essays gone?