Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox today talks about how web and TV differ, and why web is much more fast-paced than TV: Velocity of Media Consumption: TV vs. the Web (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox).
It’s his introduction though that nicely encapsulates things for me:
Japanese Dolls Lady-in-Waiting. Photo by jondresner.
From a historical perspective, it’s clear why The Tale of Genji racked up the page count. The ladies of the Japanese court had nothing else to read. After all, this was the only novel in existence in the entire world. It’s not as if Lady Murasaki had to compete with Stephen King or Tom Clancy.
Today, of course, we’re in the opposite scenario: everything we write competes with trillions of Web pages, all a few clicks away. As a result, most people actually read very few words on the Web.
So often we write as though ours are the only words within cooee. They’re not. Someone else’s words are just a click away.
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