A is also for Apple

I've always used the Internet as a tool. I use it, I expect it to have what I want, and I get frustrated when what I want isn't accessible in two minutes or less. And after reading Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and "The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet," by Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff, it seems I'm not in the minority. These were the longest articles I've read on the Internet in I don't know how long. And that's kind of sad considering I'm former newspaper person who encouraged reporters to turn in a shorter version of their stories for the paper and a longer (more golden wordy) version for online.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think I fall on the side of Anderson, who argues narrow and niched apps will overtake the openness of the Web.  With Wednesday's resignation of Steve Jobs, Apple -- with its app-driven gadget empire -- will be the company to watch in the coming year. Will its brand suffer from a changing of the guard, or will it be improved with its new, though handpicked by Jobs himself, leader at the helm? Will we see an iPhone 5 this fall? These are the questions.


Awesome: Self realization. The scholarly part of me -- albeit a small one -- sighs a bit when thinking about how instant-gratificationed we've become. I'm just as guilty as the rest, but I truly believe lounging with a good book and burying my iPhone deep away restores part of my over media-ed soul. So, on a trip I'm taking this weekend, I'll be sure and pack a good book to help foster the kind of reading Carr describes in his concluding graphs as, " ... valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds."

Not Awesome, a sidenote: From a former newspaper designer's standpoint, I found the Anderson-Wolff article difficult to read mainly because of its presentation. Do I read all of one side, then the other?  What's up with the horizontal red lines breaking up the story -- are these different sections, or merely there to break up the sections for Internet readers? Do I go section by section reading left, then right? Don't make me think about how to read your article, Wired. Design it so that thought never even occurs to me.