[apocalypstyx]

Conciseness isn't necessarily a technological limitation. During the Victorian Era "triple-decker novels" were the in-thing.

Then there's the old aphorism: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

We want to claim that style obfuscates content. However, simplicity can also be a style that obfuscates content by its nature, just as much as any other, maybe sometimes more than any other.

Maybe the problem is we want to implicitly assume that communication styles are simply accretions around the true message which exists in non-physical being, and if we could just 'read minds', everything would be perfect, and as with Gnosticism, the 'Truth' gets weighed down with the sin of physicality (wrapped up in words in this case). So we try to be verbal ascetics, throwing our sentences, rather than our bodies, in the ovens to strip flesh. When in reality the words do not convey like boxcars carrying grain, but are the thing in themselves and solely such. So maybe this ends up back at a kind of radical materialism, a world were nothing is backed by the pure truth of God (or, in this case, 'pure information').

[mannykannot]

> Conciseness isn't necessarily a technological limitation.

Of course not, but I doubt that it is entirely coincidental that the article here is from a well-established print journal.

> However, simplicity can also be a style that obfuscates content by its nature.

Occasionally, in response to an editorial mandate, I have condensed something to the point where even I have difficulty following it after some time has passed. The point here, however, is that this article is both concise and clear.

> When in reality the words do not convey like boxcars carrying grain...

Indeed; if they did, style would not be an issue, and grammar would not be a thing.

>... but are the thing in themselves and solely such.

Words in themselves are nothing without an accepted vocabulary.