Comment by lucb1e
2 years ago
> I know people love to harp on "the Internet has killed our attention spans"
Not just that. Give your parent or grandparent a 75-page booklet to read, full of accusations and snark, and let's say it's about something they care about and actually impacts their lives (maybe a local government agency, idk). What are the odds they are going to read that A-Z versus waiting for a summary or call-to-action to be put out? The latter can be expected to happen if there is actually something worthwhile in there.
This is objectively too long for casual reading, nothing to do with anyone's attention span.
(The 75-page estimate is based on: (1) a proficient reader doing about a page per minute in most books that I know of, so pages==minutes; (2) the submission being 17.6k words; (3) average reading speed is ~250 wpm, resulting in 17.6e3/250=70 minutes; (4) this is not an easy text, it has lots of acronyms and numbers, so conservatively pad to 75.)
People read it because of djb’s reputation. I’m the future, when someone smarter than you writes something it might benefit you to put aside your tone scolding and receive the information. It might be important.
Really smart people can be horrible writers. It's fair to call that out regardless of the reputation of the author.