What's The Point?

The subtitle of this blog is "Short Attention Span Theater." It's a borrow from the title of a TV series that used to show up on Comedy Central back in the early nineties. It made sense to me, as I started writing down what was on my mind on any given day, that I shouldn't ask for much more than that. There is still so much of Al Gore's Internet left to read, you shouldn't be stuck here too long, and truth be told, if there isn't something to grab you in the first few lines, you'll probably move on to the latest cat video. I can accept that. It's also true that if I take longer than a few lines to make my point, we've missed the connection.
If you're still reading this, then you understand my periodic and somewhat desperate need for an editor. If I would have opened by saying that I read in the news that Satya Nadella, Microsoft's new CEO, had issued a memo about the future of the tech behemoth that he only recently took over. That memo was more than three thousand words long. For your personal reference, up until that last "long," you had read one hundred and ninety-one words. Satya did go on. Not that the vision of Microsoft's direction could be contained in a couple of paragraphs, but it's a fantastic thing that there are journalists and bloggers out there who would distill those ideas and plans for us. Mergers and acquisitions. He would also like us to know that this will be a very important time for his company. There will be a lot of discussion among his employees. Xbox is fine. Quit your belly-aching. Microsoft cares about you, the customer.
Or something like that. You could read the whole thing, if you had a mind to. But that's not really our nature, currently. Ever since Abe Lincoln whittled down his Gettysburg Address to some two hundred forty words, Americans have been anxious to get to the bottom line. "Shall not perish from this earth." It would fit much better in that crawl you see at the bottom the screen on CNN or just about every other broadcast finding its way into your home these days. Reading is fundamental, but let's be honest, if I went on too much longer about this particular bit, even if it mentioned that Microsoft was planning on giving away new versions of its operating system to those who have been silly enough to buy into that whole Windows 8 thing, you might just glaze over and assume that if it were really important, somebody would have tweeted it by now. 
Of course, they haven't, since that whole giveaway thing is nonsense, as is a great many things you can read on Al Gore's Internet. Which makes me wonder why Mister Nadella didn't slap that whole missive on a fun YouTube clip and be done with it. Four hundred ninety-seven.