[heather45879]

I think many of the HN responses have proven the articles point having read it digitally. In a digital world people are consuming so much information they don’t have the time to properly think about the meaning behind an article—and they get it wrong, perpetuating false ideas in the blink of an eye.

Perhaps if they sat at the table, coffee in hand, and read a well-thought-out article in a newspaper or journal without digital noise they would have actually spent the time to understand what they’re reading.

[dieselgate]

You make a good point but im not sure a physical newspaper/journal would be the best example of a non-digital endeavor. I don’t intend to nitpick here but maybe one of the biggest “tradeoffs” of the digital space is access to information; when it rains it pours hey? In my opinion access to diverse news and professional/academic journals is one of the best parts of the internet.

Maybe reading a newspaper at the table with coffee with family/friends would be appropriate though - one perk of many being sunday crosswords.

[heather45879]

You’re definitely right about having a wealth of accessible information! The Internet was of course the next innovation since the Gutenberg press paved the way for knowledge transfer.

But The Internet is plagued with the disease of infinite moving adverts, and when we log in with the intent of performing some task, it is simply too easy to get distracted.

Not only is there supplemental content-oriented distractions—but form factor dictates the speed with which we read. Newspapers are indeed perhaps a bad example because the short columns of prose encourages rapid reading and potentially encourages misinterpretation. On a mobile phone with the delight of accessible, responsive websites, the shrunken column is now how we read articles of all shapes and sizes. Shapes that would traditionally be designed for a larger form factor, for slower rate of consumption.