What was the World Wide Web like at the start? Long before it became the place we think and work and talk, the air that we (and the bots) now breathe no matter how polluted it’s become?
There are many reasons not to read a book. One, because you don’t want to. Two, because you started reading, crawled to page 17, and gave up. Three, because the idea of reading never crosses your mind.
What is a newspaper? Though a few decades ago the answer might have been obvious, it’s no longer so easy to say. Newspapers have long been about more than just news; they appear less and less on paper and, despite their geographically inflected names, aren’t firmly rooted in any particular place. The New York Times is probably the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an old-fashioned extra-extra-hear-all-about-it newspaper, but it’s also the poster child for the medium’s metamorphosis.