I think the observation that people have stopped writing longform might have a little bit of observation bias (basing this on my observations :p) Back when I was in engineering college, 1982-86, the only means of communication, at least in Manipal, which was the boondocks back then, was letter writing. Parents expected weekly letters from their kids and the lack of these would often result in the unwillingness of the parents to loosen the purse strings when unexpected expenditure -rock concerts, hostel parties, things like that -arose. The thing was, nearly every one absolutely hated to write those letters home. I had a decent business going where I wrote letters for people in return for payment usually in kind - cigarettes, a beer, books - and there were several like me. We all had more business than we could handle. Sometimes a parent or two would get suspicious - "your handwriting has improved!" and the occassional, flattering to the letter writer, observation that "your English seems to gotten a lot better" So my sense is that while it's undeniable that the explosion of social media has rendered longform writing a body blow, a great majority of people were probably there long ago. We just didn't notice it because the writing types would sort of cluster together and the non writing types would be quite invisible to them Thanks and regards
Narendra Shenoy On Fri, 4 Jan 2019 at 18:24, Nandkumar Saravade <sarav...@gmail.com> wrote: > I wrote a small piece yesterday on a similar problem. > https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/conundrum-professional-learning-nandkumar-saravade > > We have to deal with shorter attention spans. > > Regards, > Nandkumar > > > On 04-Jan-2019, at 3:31 PM, Deepa Agashe <daga...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Interesting to hear all your perspectives on this. > > > > I’ve now had multiple debates with my PhD students, who keep trying to > convince me to set up a twitter account for our lab. And I continue to > resist because I find it very distracting, and counter to the idea of > developing scholarship (which to me requires time, solitude, and space, all > of which seem very limited in the fora in vogue). My students are happy to > have long and deep verbal discussions, but when I solicit opinions or > perspectives by starting an email thread for the lab, there is almost no > response. > > > > So I too am converging on the idea that the current crop of kids just > don’t write long-form. Perhaps I am paranoid, but I worry that a lot of > interesting views will be lost over time because nobody is bothering to > expound on them. A century from now, can historians piece together our > narratives from the shards of twitter? > > > > > > > >> On 04-Jan-2019, at 15:13, Nishant Shah <itsnish...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> > >> Because a lot of my work is with young kids, it is actually surprising > to > >> see how much email is actually used, but not for conversations. For a > lot > >> of the 16-22 year olds that we we work with, email is home base. it > serves > >> different purposes of notification, sign-ups, verifications, cloud > storage, > >> and archiving, but not direct communication. So a lot of emailing is a > >> trigger action rather than information transfer. One of my PhDs calls > this > >> an extended cybernetic loop without a closure, because emails are used > to > >> direct attention and click on things. This does beggar the question of > >> where to people do long-form writing. And the only thing I can sense is > >> that they don't. If it is not going on a blog or on social media posts, > it > >> is not going anywhere. Instead, different ideas seem to go on multiple > >> platforms, and surprisingly, emails sometimes become the consolidating > >> drivers that stitch them all together. > >> > >> I, personally, just queer the thing by writing whatsapp messages that > >> scroll to an infinity and facebook posts which defy good advice of > brevity > >> and ramble at will. > >> > >> On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 1:21 AM Charles Haynes <charles.hay...@gmail.com > > > >> wrote: > >> > >>>> On Thu, 3 Jan 2019 at 19:08, Thaths <tha...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>>> > >>>> On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 9:47 AM Dave Long <dave.l...@bluewin.ch> > wrote: > >>>> > >>>>>> These days I think [email] is mostly used by us old fogies. > >>>>> Fair enough, but what, pray tell, do all those non-old-fogies use to > >>>>> convey thoughts that are too long for social media comments and too > >>> short > >>>>> for blog posts? > >>>>> > >>>> > >>>> Not being on most popular social media (Twitter, FB, etc.) I am not > >>>> qualified to answer this. But when have I let such trivialities get in > >>> the > >>>> way of offering my opinions? :-) > >>>> > >>>> I posit that one way the youth of today are conveying their thoughts > in > >>>> through non-textual means: Through Snapchat (i.e., marked up > >>>> photos/images), and through the sharing of meme images/animations. One > >>>> mixed (textual and non-textual) medium popular in many parts of the > world > >>>> (and with many parallels to emails/mailing lists) seems to be WhatsApp > >>> and > >>>> similar messaging apps. > >>>> > >>> > >>> It seems to me that none of those media support the kind of thing Dave > was > >>> asking about: "too long for social media comments and too short for > blog > >>> posts" does that mean they just don't do that sort of communicating? > >>> > >>> -- Charles > >>> > >> > >> > >> -- > >> Dr. Nishant Shah (Ph.D.) > >> Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society,Bangalore, India ( > >> www.cis-india.org ) > >> International Tandem Partner, Inkubator - Leuphana University, > Lueneburg, > >> Germany > >> # +49-0176-841-660-87 > >> http://www.facebook.com/nishant.shah > >> http://cis-india.academia.edu/NishantShah > > > > >
