Dialogue, handwriting, print, photography, cinema, radio, television, digital: all these things still exist, yet each of them in turn has become the defining media of an era, longer or shorter, only to have their dominance overtaken by the next big thing. None of them have wholly been superseded, because each has its particular communication that it is not only well suited for, but such communication is almost impossible in any other form.

Debate might still be best done in person–at least the nature of debate changes through blogs and comments. It might be that books were not well suited for handwriting, but notes to myself are, and writing in a personal journal. Philosophy and other extended treatise work well in the printed book but as Neil Postman writes, extended discourse just doesn’t work on television.

The average time a reader spends on a blog post is 96 seconds. I am a fast reader, but the average is something like 200 words a minute. It is clear that this prohibits some forms of communication. It is explains why blogs are filled with such bad writing.

It is also clear that novelty is not happening in the world of books–but books will be in print long after we’ve gone beyond the keyboard-and-screen model of computing, on to the next big phase.