On writing, memory, and forgetting

I only recently encountered the Zeignarik Effect (that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks) for the first time  in a book on concentration, and had only thought about it in negative terms, since it could lead to constant distraction as unfinished tasks repeatedly popped back into mind. So intriguing (and after consideration very plausible) to think that it might have a more general and positive role in maintaining memories, or at least the ones that matter (which maybe are just those that are still 'open'). In this article, Maria Konnikova wonders if this effect was something that has been recognized as far back as Socrates, and whether his warnings then against the written word might be relevant today with respect to our embracing of online tools and databases. In both cases we are delegating the mental effort of memory to something external to us, and while this is  useful and necessary for the preservation of the data itself, it is perhaps worth considering what the affect it has on our own remaining awareness of that information, once we have successfully 'shelved' it. Indeed she even mentions a study which suggested that people are far less able to recall information that they expect to be able to have access to in the future. Socrates on Google, now that's prescient....

On writing, memory, and forgetting: Socrates and Hemingway take on Zeigarnik
Some extracts from Konnikova 's article :

• I can't help but think of an admonition that came centuries before Ms. Zeigarnik sat down to her Viennese coffee: Socrates? reproach in The Phaedrus that the written word is the enemy of memory. In the dialogue, Socrates recounts the story of the god Theuth, or Ammon, who offers the king Thamus the gift of letters:

 This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners? souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

• In this [Hemingway's] view, talking something through?completing it, so to speak, off the page?impedes the ability to actually create it to its fullest potential. Somehow, that act of closure, of having talked through a piece of work, takes away the motivation to finish.
• the advice offered by the author Justin Taylor: "Don't take notes. This is counterintuitive, but bear with me. You only get one shot at a first draft, and if you write yourself a note to look at later then that's what your first draft was?a shorthand, cryptic, half-baked fragment"
• Hemingway seems to be, in many ways, on the same page as Socrates and the same page as Zeigarnik and her foundational studies of our memories? curious quirks. What's more, the more we know about memory, the more true it seems to be that we somehow let go of the information that we no longer feel we absolutely must hold on to. Last year, a study by Betsy Sparrow and colleagues, published in Science, suggested that people are far less able to recall information that they expect to be able to have access to in the future. Instead, they remember where and how to find that information.- I would never give up the ability to record, to access, to research endless topics at the click of a button. But, with Hemingway and Socrates never far from mind, I may be slightly more cautious about how I use that ability.

note : the paper "Google Effects on Memory" is discussed in this article, and the abstract is :


Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips
Betsy Sparrow1,*,Jenny Liu2,Daniel M. Wegner
The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can ?Google? the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.

news nibbling - think before you read

Throughout history information has been the driver of progress-  the more we knew, the more we could do. While in previous ages it was only a lucky elite who had the time and resources to be involved in this process , the impetus was always a common human drive, which is why the internet, perhaps the ultimate information gathering and disseminating technology, has been seized upon and spread into every area of modern life. We are hard wired by evolution, and encouraged by culture, to discover and learn, and the one hunger which is considered always 'good', is the hunger for knowledge.

But is it possible that we could have too much of a good thing? Reading an piece on concentration recently I identified all too well with the statistics on how much time is diverted into online distraction. While of course we all click occasionally on light and meaningless topics, funny youtube links etc. the real point is that most of this time is not necessarily spent on such frivolous 'junk' but on seemingly worthwhile matter, like news, comment or reports. But the article's description of 'the long tail of information porn' made me realise that ultimately there might be not too much difference between this supposedly worthy weighty stuff, and the lighter dross, since both tap into innate urges for the novel, the desire for new facts to tickle our fancy, even if an intellectual one. These cravings are now amply catered to via the internet, and it is perhaps worth considering if there are parallels between the way we satisfy, and satiate, ourselves informationally, and how modern advances allowed us to go from simply providing for, to pandering to, other urges. Our dispositions were shaped by our evolutionary history, and the problem arises when a drive matched to a scarce natural resource, is confronted with artificial plenty. The classic example of this is our taste for sugary and fat things, and how this healthy drive is driven unhealthily  haywire by the hyper-sources of these substances modern society has created: fast food to sweets. Even though we know too much is bad for us, we are driven to start, for evolutionary emotional reasons, and find it hard to stop for rational ones.

It is possible that a similar (if much weaker) story is now starting to play out with information. Last year I encountered for the first time the phrase 'psychological obesity' and it struck me as encapsulating the dangers perfectly. Could it be that we are getting so used to gorging ourselves on information, and over relying on the mechanisms which deliver it, that we are at risk of missing out on the real benefits that underlie it, and which made it an evolutionary goal? It seems ludicrous to suggest that more information is anything but a good thing, but maybe in harsher times and societies the same could be thought about food, and what would seem to be the insane possibility of eating too much. The point is what we learn is only in important in so far as it contributes to what we actually know, and what we can do with it. Just as food is only a resource to enable the production of energy, to be able to DO things, information and even knowledge itself is only a means to an end. Since it worked for most of our evolutionary history nature has used the shortcut of embedding in us the emotional drive for the means, but now that the normally required levels can be surpassed, we must use our rational self-control to focus on the meaning instead.  We need to realise that we cannot drift through the new oceans of information scooping up data like whales with plankton, since as in all areas, we can over consume and like the obese body disabled by too much resources, we won't be able to use even some of them properly.

There is however probably a psychological side to this problem, since apart from the drive for gain, their is our powerful aversion to loss. Faced with a deluge of data we need to choose what is most important and relevant to us, but to choose somethings is to discard others, and this we hate doing. In the material domain we (mostly) have grown to appreciate we can't actually have it all, at the same time, but we are less used to such limitations in our mental worlds. Furthermore this involves one of the more personal and poignant kinds of loss, since to choose to know is to choose what to be, and we are particularly reluctant to close off possible futures, possible selves. Choice is hard, which is why we find it easier to surf endlessly on the tsunami of information, rather than swim in any particular direction. We feel like we're doing valid travelling, but really we're going nowhere.

To really move forward we not only need to obtain information, we need to process it, and apart from the requirement of manageable amounts, we also need to develop the mental mechanisms and habits to do so properly. Again the internet and other technology are a double-edged sword, since while they provide us with valid and valuable tools and shortcuts, they do not (yet, and for the foreseeable future) provide the complete answer. To use data we need to know more than just how to access it, which webpage or search tool will find it for us, but how to interpret it, and how it relates. While I may not need to know the exact dates of events leading up to say the first world war, knowing where to find them will never allow me apply this information in another area. Only if I have analyzed the history, thought about the chronology, recognize the patterns, will I actually UNDERSTAND what is otherwise simply a sequence of events, and be able, for example, to spot parallels and resonances in current situations. Wikipedia means I do not need to clutter my mind with the minutiae, but I can only use it do to help me once I have already understood the meaning.

Unfortunately this takes time, and effort. We must choose what we want to know, and then educate ourselves, and there is no taskbar which can speed this process up for us, since we need to allow our minds to mull and manipulate the data, and bring its unparalleled pattern matching powers to bear. But in this too the mood of the internet is against us, because the constant drive for the new, means constant changeover, and little time for such consideration. I was struck once by a comment a travel blogger made to me about how even when writing about places and societies that were hundreds or even thousands of years old, in the blogosphere there was a mentality that if it was not immediate, not in real time, it somehow was less relevant. When writing about a trip along the ancient route of the silk road, he felt like there was a demand for him to post while on the move,, from phone or netcafe, even though the thing being written about had not changed for centuries. The web audience feels that anything written in the past or retrospect, is somehow already dated, and this is not just removed from what is needed for proper knowledge, but anathema to it.  I admit I succumb to this prejudice myself often enough, for example if choosing a new psychology book to read anything more than 10 years old feels somehow outdated and less worthwhile than a newer text. While of course theories develop, a classic remains a classic just because it achieves an insight that lasts, and it could be argued that a decade old book that is still around, has proved its worth by its endurance against something new which might be a flash in the pan. Ironically the effect of the modern zeitgeist is to trap us in the now, while the point of deep knowledge is to allow us to escape to the past and future as well.

So, the upshot of this is I feel that it wouldn't be a bad thing to impose on myself a bit of a 'digital diet'. Just as one can count calories to manage one's weight, I think one needs to become an information connoisseur. To know anything I need to accept I cannot know everything.

You choose your friends, but only 150 of them

Interesting talk from TEDxObserver given by Robin Dunbar :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07IpED729k8&list=PL880EAF3F736F99AC&index=6&feature=plpp_video
"Robin, currently director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology of the University of Oxford, is renowned for creating a formula which is now known as 'Dunbar's number' - and that number is 150. This calculates the 'cognitive limit' of the number of people we can hold meaningful friendships with. When it was first formulated it created a fevered debate about the nature of and the differences between, online and real 'friendships'.
Robin will explore the psychology and ethology of romantic love to find out if the brain - and science - can help us explain how and why we fall in love."

In the talk he mentions also that we have circles of levels of friendship, with the average number of close friends being 5, then a next level of about 15, etc. Perhaps not surprisingly being in a romantic relationship costs 2 close friends, due mainly to the lack of time available to devote to such friendships. Indeed time spent is a key factor in how friendships are maintained, though there are it seems gender differences, with women spending more time in verbal communication (average female phone call was something close to an hour) than men (average phone call something like 7 seconds! 'meet you at 10? yip! grand so'). And face to face time, meeting in person or even skype, is the most valuable of all, which indicates that online relationships face major hurdles in being maintained

Also interesing is from this guardian interview with him on the question as to whether Dunbar's number can be increased :

"We're caught in a bind: community sizes were designed for hunter-gatherer- type societies where people weren't living on top of one another. Your 150 were scattered over a wide are, but everybody shared the same 150. This made for a very densely interconnected community, and this means the community polices itself. You don't need lawyers and policemen. If you step out of line, granny will wag her finger at you.
Our problem now is the sheer density of folk – our networks aren't compact. You have clumps of friends scattered around the world who don't know one another: now you don't have an interwoven network. It leads to a less well integrated society. How to re-create that old sense of community in these new circumstances? That's an engineering problem. How do we work around it?"

Since a major issue in the modern world is how to view, shape and even sign up to 'society' then the fact that our brains are evolved for such small social groupingswill have to be taken into account. Perhaps one element of a solution would be to consider 'groups' as 'persons'. So maybe if one viewed 'other commuters' or 'Germany' or 'bankers' as 1 of the 150 individuals one can keep track of, then it would allow the rest of society to be some how kept socially 'in mind' rather than being a blurry 'other'. Of course the main problem with this would be the risk of stereotyping and blanket generalization, but since we have know complex and deep individuals, maybe we can similarly have 'friendship' with complex and complicated groups. Of course this is just a spur of the moment idea, but the point is we need to take our natural dispositions into account if we are to adapt to the modern world.

Teaching kids code not computers, but to other levels as well

" Starting in primary school, children from all backgrounds and every part of the UK should have the opportunity to: learn some of the key ideas of computer science; understand computational thinking; learn to program; and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of excellence in these activities.
We'll get to why this is important and necessary in a moment, but first we need to face up to a painful fact. It is that almost everything we have done over the last two decades in the area of ICT education in British schools has been misguided and largely futile. Instead of educating children about the most revolutionary technology of their young lifetimes, we have focused on training them to use obsolescent software products. And we did this because we fell into what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle would have called a "category mistake" – an error in which things of one kind are presented as if they belonged to another. We made the mistake of thinking that learning about computing is like learning to drive a car, and since a knowledge of internal combustion technology is not essential for becoming a proficient driver, it followed that an understanding of how computers work was not important for our children"
A radical manifesto for teaching computing | Education | The Observer

Overall of course I agree with this, since perhaps the most notable feature of modern technology, is how little specialized skill is needed to use them. Motion sensors, voice recognition and touch screens mean even the input mechanisms are almost "natural" and one barely needs to be able to use even a keyboard and mouse any more. This trend indicates the real need will not be training in tools, since the tools require training less and less,  but education about the tools,  their hidden internal structures,  not only to foster an environment to develop more and better tools, but to maintain an independence from them, since a common downside of ease of use is over reliance and too much trust. The less we have to think about using the tools, the less able we are to handle situations where they go wrong, or , more importantly, even spot when they might.
The only reservation I have is that while incredibly useful, computational, algorithmic thinking can also be restrictive, and am always wary of it being exalted as the paradigm of "intelligence",  and there is a risk that introducing these skills early, without appropriate balance, may have limiting effects on creative development. The point is just as  education should focus on the structures behind the tools, it must also include an analysis of the foundations of those very structures themselves. Education not only go beyond the how to the why, but to the why not as well.

Text Advertising Blindness: The New Banner Blindness?

Since I personally think I don't just ignore, but hardly even register (at least consciously) ads in google and facebook etc., then interesting to read about a paper which suggests this is a real psychological phenomenon (abstract here, full paper here)
This is not just relevant to advertisers, since a corrolary to this 'advertising blindness' is that real information might also be ignored if it is easily confused with being advertising, e.g. on the right hand side of the page where ads are often placed.
Some points from the study are :

• Users demonstrate text advertisement ?blindness? when viewing web pages. This means that information displayed in areas of the page dedicated to text ads (e.g., top of the page, right side) is generally ignored or viewed last.
• Users are less likely to find information on a web page if it is located on the right side of the page than on the top of the page if both areas resemble text ads. This is especially true when they are searching for specific information.
• When conducting an informational, or semantic, search, users have equal amount of difficulty finding information that is embedded in an ad either at the top or on the right side of the page.
• The perception of whether a region is perceived as advertising affects how web pages are searched. When a region is seen as advertisements, users will scan the area if it necessitates completing their task and will likely do so only after scanning other content areas. However, if the region is perceived as content, users will integrate the area into their search strategy, possibly as an expected location for their search goal or a location covered by a heuristic.
• Users typically associate the right side of a web page with text ads and consequently view this area of the page last or not at all. As a result, both designers and advertisers should use caution when placing content information on the right side of the page

Screen vs. Paper, some information and thoughts

I had assumed the 'retina' (eye can't detect individual pixels at the normal usage distance) display on the latest ipad was really about more impressive graphics, i.e. for games and video playback, but was very interested to see the comment that such displays would make a difference to simple reading.

It seems that the low quality of electronic displays has been postulated to result in significantly slower reading speeds with respect to paper, and the idea is that such vastly improved screens will overcome this. The article linked above says that reading is about half as fast on a standard resolution kindle versus paper, but also that there has not been a lot of recent research on the topic, and one of the most important references is a paper from as far back as 2001 (which suggested 10-30% speed differences).

This is a fascinating area which I think is of increasing importance as screen input becomes more and more the default mechanism, not just for offices, but for schools, colleges and even hobby reading at home.

The 'google scholar' service is an excellent resource for the layman (like myself) to search for related papers, for example those on screen and paper reading differences . What follows are the results from a brief investigation of the topic; however this is something I must return to again, and deal with in more detail.

What the studies say 
One (more) recent (2008) paper  ("Computer- vs. paper-based tasks: Are they equivalent?" provides a nice overview of the state of the literature at that time. According to this paper, pre-1991 many studies indeed resulted in some indication that paper reading was better in terms of reading speed, accuracy and comprehension, but there were also in all areas studies which found no significant differences. One major issue with these old studies is the display technology involved at the time, which for a fact resulted in more tiredness for the eyes, which obviously would have been an influencing factor. Similary the level of competence and experience of subjects in those days, when computer use was much less prevalent, is also something which needs to be considered. In my own view, changes in technology and usage question to some extent, but not completely, the relevance of these old studies.

Of the 10 studies listed :

• 5 found reading slower on screen as compared to paper, 3 found no differences
• 2 found comprehension worse when using a screen, 4 found no differences

The paper goes on to say though that since 1992 studies have been more aware of the need to preserve equivalence between the screen and paper versions of the testing task, and thus less reliance on partial performance indicators such as reading speed. However although now considered of less interest, differences in reading speed have been suggested even in studies using modern technology.

Modern studies pay more attention to other areas. For example there is the theory that using a computer involves more 'cognitive load' than reading from paper, with one study reporting "Although they found no significant difference in the comprehension scores or the overall workload scores for the two media, significantly more workload was reported on the effort dimension for the computer-based task. This finding is interesting, since it suggests that individuals need to put more effort into the computer task:"

Of the 20 post-1992 studies listed, if considered in light of a general 'which is better screen or paper' (speed, comprehnsion, accuracy etc.) half reported no difference, while 4 suggested benefits to the electronic method, and the same number , 4, suggested the opposite, that paper was more advantageous.

Beyond the effect on the individuals behaviour in pursuit of their own private or professional goals, one very important issue mentioned in this paper is the equivalence of paper based tests versus an electronic version. Given the amount of such electronic testing that is now performed, in all kinds of areas, and while many studies have found no differences, some have, and this means equivalence probably cannot always be simply assumed, but needs to be established. The paper concludes " total equivalence
is not possible to achieve, although developments in computer technology, more
sophisticated comparative measures and more positive user attitudes have resulted in a
continuing move towards achieving this goal."


Overall it seems the evidence is inconclusive, with a slight balance in favour of paper versus screen in certain simple areas, such as speed. However, balanced against this are many advantages of electronic formats, for example ease of retrieval and search mechanisms. So while the reading of one particular document might be better done from hard copy, the overall exploration of a volume of information is greatly facillitated by it being in electronic format.


More than just reading
Another important point I think is that studies cannot just focus on limited screen vs. paper tasks performed in isolation, but must consider as well our overall behaviour when it comes to the different media. This is raised in this interesting blog post  which references the point that 'materiality matters' made by an Anne Mangen, who agured in a journal article : "The reading experience includes manual activities and haptic perceptions (what the skin and muscles and joints register), and so as activities and perceptions of that kind are changed from one kind of reading experience to another because of the object, the reading experience, too, will change."

The point, which I consider a very valid one, is that reading on a screen means more than just considering it as electronic paper; the screen is part of a particular world in which we have certain general behaviours.

For example, I personally think that reading documents online is at risk of being contaminated by other online reading habits we have, habits which are adapted to dealing with a torrent of often un/semi-interesting or relevant information. We are so used to scanning webpages, search results, chain emails that I think we have developed mechanisms to skip through them, our hands contsantly on the mouse, scrolling incessantly. This approach is so different to the way we handle paper information, devoting our mind and body completely to it, with relatively little opportunity for distraction, and even physically reading in a different way - moving our eyes across it, and only turning the page occasionally, as opposed to our eyes staying fixed while we scroll the text past them.  Of course we can skim hard copies as well, but I think the brute physical stability of it results in a difference to how we handle webpages, and electronic documents. The point is not that electronic reading is necessarily of lower quality than of hard copy, but that we need to handle different types of information in different ways, and bad habits from one area might infect another. We use computers for many things, and so performing a task with them in reality is going to involve the general habits, attitudes and dispositions we have in dealing with electronic media, and this is something which might not be considered when testing individual tasks in isolation in a laboratory. If someone is used to skimming a newspaper every morning online, then this might affect how they read an important document later in the day when sitting at the same computer in the same environment. In contrast, reading a document as part of a study would be to do so in a completely different psychological setting, and might well be done differently.

Relevant to this is the result in the 'Computer- vs. paper-based tasks' paper above that people reported a higher workload for performing a task on a computer than on paper. Simply the fact of using a computer for the test had a psychological effect on the subjects, and this has to do with how we use computers in general, and not the particular task being tested. Hence only if such background behavioural information is also studied and understood, can it be effectively compensated for in any particular task test.

Beyond the medium being the message, the medium shapes us, and hence pinpointing the differences between media, is never going to be a simple task.

Words with word

Am very interested in the possible influence of the tools we use to write on the writing itself, so an interesting article on Microsoft word:

Has Microsoft Word affected the way we work? | Technology | The Observer

an extract:
But has word processing changed the way we write? There have been lots of inconclusive or unconvincing studies of how the technology has affected, say, the quality of student essays – how it facilitates plagiarism. The most interesting academic study I looked at found that writers using computers "spent more time on a first draft and less on finalising a text, pursued a more fragmentary writing process, tended to revise more extensively at the beginning of the writing process, attended more to lower linguistic levels [letter, word] and formal properties of the text, and did not normally undertake any systematic revision of their work before finishing".

Attention and the web

Fittingly brief article on attention and technology:
Untangling the web: attention | Technology | The Observer

References a book on the typic, with a collection of pieces from the likes of Steven Pinker etc., but also points out jury is still very much out in terms of hard evidence (at least for the moment).
But I do like her closing comment:
" Over the last year I've insisted again and again that the web is not doing anything to us; that it merely presents us with a mirror that challenges us to face ourselves. The only way we can untangle ourselves from the web is to pay attention to this, and to reflect on what it is, in the 21st century, we do to ourselves and to one another."

I personally don't concur that the web is not doing anything to us, since I think any such significant change in how we organize, evaluate and manage not only our lives but our self and social image, must result in some cognitive changes, just as countless other things do. But I agree with the idea that what really is required to deal with this is not just better analysis and understanding of the technology, but of ourselves as well. As the title of Charlie Brooker's new TV drama  suggests, it is a "black mirror", a glass through which we see ourselves, albeit sometimes darkly.

The swype is mightier than the sword

Due to a broken shoulder I'm down to one working hand at the moment and as a result have been writing a lot on my phone using swype. Apart from finding it actually easier and more efficient than trying to stab away on a laptop, once again I find myself thinking about the method itself, and whether there might be a qualitative difference in using it. 

Writing with swype is actually very much like writing with a pen, in that one sweeps gracefully through the word one letter at a time, and I could imagine that this involves a different mental focus when compared to proper double handed typing (or even its two fingered virtual keyboard cousin). With typing, the word is pumped out almost as a unit, via an automatic burst of key strokes which are almost in parallel, and there is little thought or feeling of the individual letters that constitute it (which might explain my tendency in emails to mix up similarly sounding words, like "are", "our" and "or"). But when writing with a pen, or swype, one must deliberately spell out the word, letter by letter, and this must involve slightly different thinking? If only because one must wait until each word has fully resolved itself, and made that bit more of an impression, before one can fully turn one's attention to the next. Maybe it is even similar to the difference between the old way in which reading was taught, with the focus on the full word as a whole, and the new phonics method of teaching, which is supposed to be more effective. The fact that the two styles of instruction differ in effectiveness  indicates a difference in mental processing, between gulping the word down  as a block, and slowly sipping it in in chunks.

It must be possible to devise studies that could analyse this,  e.g. by comparing paragraphs written with the different methods, and it would be interesting to see if there is any variation in style, flow or word choice. For example, maybe the rapid fire of typing encourages free association, with words and ideas leading almost unconsciously to the next, and maybe in contrast the slow plodding pen (or swype) results in more deliberate thought. I'm not suggesting this is the case, but think our mental processing can be so influenced by subtle things, that such phenomena are definitely possible. And, since digital writing is now the norm, even being common place in schools etc. , replacing the centuries old tradition of inscription, then it is surely a topic worthy of study.  Online and in archives we are what we write, so it is important to know if how we write matters.
Of course, maybe we just haven't developed the same proficiency in swype as have in typing, and lost that proficiency through disuse in writing by hand, so even if mental differences now, maybe would converge over time. Again this is something which could be tested, for example by comparing types and swypes of subjects with varying skill.

However, I think it will always be true that swype/pen is slower and requires more effort, since the letters come out serially while typing is more parallel, and maybe this contains the significant difference. And this extra effort is I think a good thing -  I am reminded of the Ents in the Lord of the Rings, with their excruciatingly labourious language, which was so drawn and took so long to say anything with, that they only ever said something if it was worth taking a long time to say.

What also might be relevant is that writing never used be as natural  as speaking (even if not our biological default it is of course still in some way "natural" if we do it all, like wearing clothes), and maybe proficient typing, in being almost automatic, is actually closer to speaking. Which then raises questions about whether 'new' writing is different to 'old', and whether there are any consequences of this.

Or is this maybe changing, at least in certain domains? And should we be aware of this, and maybe learn when each style is more appropriate? The productivity of modern technology also means easier to generate more rubbish, and the sheer volume of comment and statement we can produce might dilute what actually matters, and result in reduced quality, particularly through lack of clarity. Because no  matter how effortless it is, speaking relies on accompanying elements beyond the words, such as tone, facial demeanour and expressive sounds,  which help convey subtlety and nuance, tools which writing must do without, and hence requires more care and effort to avoid misinterpretation.
Which is why of course rapid text/chat speak was accompanied by the invention of emoticons like smileys, but these are relatively weak aids given the complexity of human expression.

So while we should think before we speak, we must think even more before we write, and maybe slower, serial input methods further this. The pen is mightier than the sword, but the qwerty keyboard is double edged.