Who Said it First? Nxtbook or Apple?

Michael Turro has written a very provocative post about long-form content’s place in our digital future. This was a further development of a reference he made to Dave Caolo’s article on unitasking. The curious part is that some writers are now suggesting the walled nature of some Apple apps as an intentional design concept rather than being the oversight they likely are.

It wasn’t too long ago that digital magazine interfaces were looked at the same way. Even though long form reading is often a solitary activity, we’ve long felt the pressure from Turro and others to make the content more open – more open to social media, more open to RSS feeds, more upon to the very things that some are now suggesting are potential distractions.

In the end, I suspect Caolo’s right when he says all of this is temporary. For better or worse, the web is connected, those who’ve encouraged us to promote its connections are correct, and publishers and users are wise to ask us to keep those connected apparent. The challenge for a digital publisher like ourselves is to allow those connections to exist, but to not push them to the point of distraction.