It’s popular these days to proclaim the death of long-form reading. It is reasoned that, due to our society’s hunger for video clips and web snippets, the majority of us have lost interest in doing in-depth reading on a topic. This is occurring much to the dismay of many authors and publishers who feel that their livelihood, and one of the activities that our society believes enriches us as a culture, is slowly fading from importance. The internet, and the way in which information is presented online, is usually blamed for making inroads into long-form reading. However, after spending hundreds of hours over the past three months creating a multimedia version of my book, I would like to suggest a different hypothesis. I don’t think long-form reading is going to die. In fact, I think we’re going to go longer.
The central argument of those who are declaring the death of long-form reading is the idea that consumers prefer “snippets” and clips instead of in-depth analysis. While this may be true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that consumers want less information overall. It may only mean that they prefer to consume the longer analysis of a topic in shorter bursts, or from a variety of sources. This shift doesn’t necessarily signal the death of a certain type of mental exploration, but rather a change in the way we achieve that exploration. For starters, we have to look at how long-form reading became the pinnacle of learning to begin with. When long-form reading was in its prime, information was scarcer than we find it in our world today. If you wanted to explore a topic in depth, you sought out a book. And, if you wanted to know even more, you went to the library and sought out more books. When the flow of information to individuals was less efficient, we relied on authors to curate disparate information and present it cohesively in the form of a book. This method, that created long-form reading, was the most efficient way to learn about complex topics. However, we must ask ourselves, is that still true today?
Today information flows efficiently (for the most part) from one corner of the globe to the other, in seconds. Forms of media, namely video, that were once cost prohibitive for the dissemination of information are now extremely cost effective. With that being the case, we have to reassess the value of long-form reading compared to other types of media and combinations of various media. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how much is a video worth? 10,000? 20,000? Assuming the video is of high quality (yes, I realize a great deal of online video is crap), the content I encounter in 20 minutes may cover the same amount of ground as two chapters of a book. Likewise, a 1000 word blog can substitute for a third chapter. Instead of reading about examples that back up the claims, I can often go and check them out myself. I can experience them first hand, or through the stories of others, which enhances my understanding. Reading is great, but experiencing is better. All of this can be done immediately, and at little or no cost. With another hour of follow up exploration, it is completely feasible to have accessed a majority of the information I want to know about a given topic. However, where long-form reading comes back into play, and the reason it won’t die, is the structure and logic that is afforded by the medium.
The problem with using a variety of sources and media for exploring a topic is that it lacks structure, a consistent point of view and the logic that builds to an over-arching theme, or theory. Long-form reading is still great because it takes the leg work out of analyzing what the data means and how things fit together. Learning about a topic is made infinitely easier when a cohesive and logical progression of information is made available to us. Long-form reading brings clarity to an otherwise fragmented set of information. For that reason, long-form reading isn’t going away anytime soon. We need the structure of long-form reading just as much as we need disparate media types available to us on the web. Since we need them both, I would argue that the name of the game moving forward is supplementation.
The variety of media available online and the act of long-form reading are all great tools in their own right for all of the reasons I have listed above. The future of exploring information is not about choosing one over the other, but figuring out the best way to leverage them in combination. The strengths and weaknesses of each can be offset by bringing them together. In the near future, you won’t simply read a chapter for 40 minutes. You’ll read a chapter for 40 minutes, click on the 18 minute TED talk linked into paragraph 3, explore a counterargument blog post in paragraph 6 and spend an hour skimming supplemental links provided by the author at the end of the chapter. Long-form reading isn’t going to die. We’re going to augment it. In the process, the act of reading may be broken up into smaller pieces, but the net effect is spending more time exploring a topic. In short, we’re moving towards longer-form reading.
The central argument of those who are declaring the death of long-form reading is the idea that consumers prefer “snippets” and clips instead of in-depth analysis. While this may be true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that consumers want less information overall. It may only mean that they prefer to consume the longer analysis of a topic in shorter bursts, or from a variety of sources. This shift doesn’t necessarily signal the death of a certain type of mental exploration, but rather a change in the way we achieve that exploration. For starters, we have to look at how long-form reading became the pinnacle of learning to begin with. When long-form reading was in its prime, information was scarcer than we find it in our world today. If you wanted to explore a topic in depth, you sought out a book. And, if you wanted to know even more, you went to the library and sought out more books. When the flow of information to individuals was less efficient, we relied on authors to curate disparate information and present it cohesively in the form of a book. This method, that created long-form reading, was the most efficient way to learn about complex topics. However, we must ask ourselves, is that still true today?
Today information flows efficiently (for the most part) from one corner of the globe to the other, in seconds. Forms of media, namely video, that were once cost prohibitive for the dissemination of information are now extremely cost effective. With that being the case, we have to reassess the value of long-form reading compared to other types of media and combinations of various media. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how much is a video worth? 10,000? 20,000? Assuming the video is of high quality (yes, I realize a great deal of online video is crap), the content I encounter in 20 minutes may cover the same amount of ground as two chapters of a book. Likewise, a 1000 word blog can substitute for a third chapter. Instead of reading about examples that back up the claims, I can often go and check them out myself. I can experience them first hand, or through the stories of others, which enhances my understanding. Reading is great, but experiencing is better. All of this can be done immediately, and at little or no cost. With another hour of follow up exploration, it is completely feasible to have accessed a majority of the information I want to know about a given topic. However, where long-form reading comes back into play, and the reason it won’t die, is the structure and logic that is afforded by the medium.
The problem with using a variety of sources and media for exploring a topic is that it lacks structure, a consistent point of view and the logic that builds to an over-arching theme, or theory. Long-form reading is still great because it takes the leg work out of analyzing what the data means and how things fit together. Learning about a topic is made infinitely easier when a cohesive and logical progression of information is made available to us. Long-form reading brings clarity to an otherwise fragmented set of information. For that reason, long-form reading isn’t going away anytime soon. We need the structure of long-form reading just as much as we need disparate media types available to us on the web. Since we need them both, I would argue that the name of the game moving forward is supplementation.
The variety of media available online and the act of long-form reading are all great tools in their own right for all of the reasons I have listed above. The future of exploring information is not about choosing one over the other, but figuring out the best way to leverage them in combination. The strengths and weaknesses of each can be offset by bringing them together. In the near future, you won’t simply read a chapter for 40 minutes. You’ll read a chapter for 40 minutes, click on the 18 minute TED talk linked into paragraph 3, explore a counterargument blog post in paragraph 6 and spend an hour skimming supplemental links provided by the author at the end of the chapter. Long-form reading isn’t going to die. We’re going to augment it. In the process, the act of reading may be broken up into smaller pieces, but the net effect is spending more time exploring a topic. In short, we’re moving towards longer-form reading.
