The thing that's distinctive about writing on the web as opposed to paper is that it's incredibly unpleasant to read on a screen. It's at a strange angle, the typography is lousy, and I'm doing it at my desk. So writing on the web has to be more snappy (small chunks, annecdotes, funny bits, full of things for readers to do, like clicking) than it otherwise would be in order to keep my attention. And it has to be about sports, sex, or wombats.
Anyway, for the stuff I put on the web, writing this way took some getting used to. But I wonder if my academic writing isn't getting better as a result.
In other news, it turns out that scientists have discovered that consciousness really is seated in an immaterial soul and that the brain is just a fellow traveler. There goes the past hundred years or so of the philosophy of mind!
Posted by Mike Green at June 29, 2001 02:11 PM