Due to the distractions and time constraints on the Internet, I wonder if publishing is going to change in a way that it would be just as attention grabbing if it were on a computer. I don’t think it would constitute an appeasement to digital consumers, but simply attention to usability concerns. Usability is something that’s thought a lot about in web design in order to make sure the content is accessible to a wide audience, but I don’t think the same care has been put into books. With books it’s up to the reader to self-motivate and finish several hundred pages, and it’s expected that the people reading the book are people who like reading a lot and have the time to do so. On the web, content tends to be optimized to hold the reader’s attention, since statistics show they’ll only hang around for 3 minutes. If it does change, this could be yet another way new technology will make information more accessible to under-served audiences.

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