"Yet we are terrified that in the digital age, people are constantly distracted. That they’re shallower, lazier, more dazzled. If they are, then the text is not speaking clearly enough. We are not speaking clearly enough. Like over-stuffed attendees at a dull banquet, the mind wanders. We are terrified that people are dumbing down, and so we provide them with ever dumber entertainment. We sell them ever greater distractions, hoping to dazzle them further."

"I’m not against having a touchscreen on an ebook reader. Tapping on a book to open it makes perfect sense, even if it does mean that the screen gets dirty. But having a touchscreen doesn’t preclude you from also adding a hardware button that makes the one single thing people do the most often with your device as easy and seamless as possible."

"I tell myself that it’s not possible, anyway, to shelve the advance of technology, and that history is filled with examples of beautiful things being supplanted by more efficient versions of those things. Ultimately, you’re never going to win an argument against convenience, no matter how much you love the anachronistic, heavy, unwieldy, and beautiful thing you want to save."

"The current surface forms for digital books are far from perfect, but they work and are getting better with each device and software iteration. So, in my opinion, many of the critical future questions digital books designers will have to address don’t directly involve pure content layout. Future-book design is not merely about font sizes and leading. Instead, our hardest (and possibly most rewarding) problems will involve the intermingling of content and data."

"So, even if they now seem natural, the lengths and formats of books are but cultural accidents. If this all goes, there will be consequences for the shape, size and format of prose narrative. How far is up for debate."

"RSS is best for following a large number of infrequently updated sites: sites that you’d never remember to check every day because they only post occasionally, and that your social-network friends won’t reliably find or link to."

"How many people are subscribers to The New Yorker iPad app that don’t actually read for whatever reason? If the app were easier to use and quicker to access, then you’d have users, not just subscribers."

"Apps like Instapaper and Reeder offer more of a “reading environment” (like a library); Wired and The New Yorker are more like an amusement park with words. One isn’t better or worse than the other, but people who like to read a lot certainly don’t spend the majority of their reading time at a noisy amusement park."

"Some of the qualms about digital research reflect a feeling that anything obtained too easily loses its value. What we work for, we better appreciate. If an amateur can be beamed to the top of Mount Everest, will the view be as magnificent as for someone who has accomplished the climb? Maybe not, because magnificence is subjective. But it’s the same view."

Interesting thoughts on processing and managing the stream.

The thing is this -- the iPad has a perfectly functional web browser. It isn't a "mobile" web browser. It has a full-size screen. It doesn't need any accomodations to be readable, it is readable as-is.

Totally fascinating article fro Kevin Kelly about the future of books.

Shawn Blanc surveys news.me and how it relates to Flipboard and other news consumption.

Marco Arment writes about what the inclusion of more full featured reading options in Safari means for Instapaper.

"So why was this different than getting lost in Google Books, or the web itself?

In some ways it is very similar and offers a similar serendipity. But stacks of paper offer several user experiences that are superior to online browsing."

"The most beautiful thing about being a Twitter consumer to me is that just reading Twitter is now a new source of information and entertainment – even without clicking on the links. It is, in and of itself, news. And entertainment. When I’m stuck between meetings, at an airport, waiting for a movie to start – I pull out my mobile device and start flicking through the stream."

"But they fail to notice that everything is dead the same way RSS is, including their employers, their jobs, their way of life, etc etc. Because things change, and first visions of new things, even things that become wildly popular, are usually wrong."

Fred Wilson surveys some of the statistics avc.com gets from various traffic sources. Turns out RSS is still a heavy player for him.

Frank Chimero shares his two favorite things about the web from 2010. Both look like keepers.

Daniel Bachhuber answers my question on Kommons about how his reading habits have changed since he quit Twitter.

"...when good writing is in abundance, I only want to read the very best of it. If you care about your craft, then write me a short letter—I’ll pay more for it."

"I’m curious as to what the tipping point was for projects like WordPress and Drupal to really take off in terms of exponential community growth and user adoption. (Can anyone in the know chime in here?)"

"If you were to ask me what I thought I was doing in checking news sites on the internet as many as eight to 10 times per day, starting with the election in 2004, I would tell you I thought I was keeping myself safe. Especially late at night, I felt like I was on night watch for the forces that would eventually put George Bush back in power one more time. It felt like a vigil."

iA on the different use cases for scrolling versus card-like layout of content.

"The tradition of the commonplace book contains a central tension between order and chaos, between the desire for methodical arrangement, and the desire for surprising new links of association."

"The book, that fusty old technology, seems rigid and passé as we daily consume a diet of information bytes and digital images. The fault, dear reader, lies not in our books but in ourselves."

"Many of these metrics are accessibility related. It's scary that most of the highly-praised ereaders (such as Wired / New Yorker / Time magazine's apps) eliminate the inherent accessibility of digital text. Of course, this is a transition period, but why not start off on the right foot? Digital text isn't the same artifact that printed text is. Let's not treat it like it is."

"To put it simply: you can no longer measure value by pageviews, impressions, or subscribers. And so it’s folly to build a site that uses those numbers to measure its success."

A search for undistracted reading in a time when there's ever more accessible.

Rands has a new book out. Sounds like a good one.

Marco's viewpoint on why there is still space for the Kindle.

"Has endlessly skimming short texts on the internet made us stupider? An increasing number of experts think so - and say it's time to slow down..."

One of the many reasons why we need free, publicly linkable books online. The example from Kottke.org is a illustrative as well.

The New Yorker looks at the details behind ebooks, the Kindle, and the iPad.

Clay Shirky discusses his reading habits and sources of news and knowledge.

A Duke University professor turned the grading for a recent course over to the students and claims that work was better and more productive.

Frustrations with the current systems of tracking reading habits. I would love to have a system that allows me to track information in a non-proprietary standard.

Elliot Jay Stocks discusses why he believes the future of physical books will still be long. There is a special role for physical copies of unique books.

A new study is complicating our ideas about how people consume information on the web. Perhaps they are not ideological hermits like previously conceived.

Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, argues against the notion that the internet replaces the need for memorizing information. Also discussed is a purely collaborative pedagogy and the role for current technologies in a liberal education.

"If you care about the future of books, you need to understand the Google Book Settlement. It's a complicated legal document, but we've talked to some of its architects, detractors, and defenders - and break it all down for you."

A worthy read exploring the current position and future growth of the book.

Account of how, for one user at least, Google Reader has been able to fill a role similar to Delicious. The weight is still on discovery of new rather than preservation of previous reads.

Marco Arment explains why Apple's decision to use private APIs in its iBooks app is worrisome to developers of other reading-based apps.

Paul Carr argues that the iPad is fundamentally having a negative effect upon reading. Kyle Baxter argues otherwise. Seems that your mileage may vary.

"They really hate when you actually read their content. That’s what they’re communicating by distraction-oriented design: 'We don’t respect you, and we’re trying to aggravate you as much as possible, but not quite enough that you’ll stop coming.'"

A solid deconstruction of some of the driving differences between reading on an iPad/iPhone and your computer's LCD display.