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Distraction vs. discipline
On the continuing debate about whether War and Peace matters, blogger Jeremy Hatch nails it in this post. Quoting, emphasis mine:
One of the things that surprised me most in reading this whole debate is this: nobody has yet acknowledged that it is entirely possible to read, be absorbed in, and thoroughly enjoy a book-length work of literature (or a book-length argument) on a screen. ... your ability to concentrate on a long text is not a function of the medium of delivery, but a function of your personal discipline and your aims in reading....In my experience, the distractions the web offers are entirely ignorable when you want to ignore them, and the web also enables deep research and contemplation to a degree that stretches far beyond the invention of the open-stack public library.
Maintaining a healthy media diet means engaging the right sources (books, magazines, blogs) at the right time - and that's the user's responsibility, no one else's. This gets to the larger discipline of bit literacy: keeping an empty inbox, a pruned todo list, an organized photo library, and so on - engaging the few important bits and and letting everything else go - people need to learn all of it.
Anyone who thinks that today's Web makes it difficult to read a book, or to clear their inbox, should consider learning these new essential skills.
(via kevin kelly)
This parallels something I've been thinking about lately. The faster the world seems to move, the more you can get ahead by thinking more slowly and deeply. So few people are slowing down enough to really create something new and valuable that it can be a competitive advantage!