He devises a plausible model of two types of readers, #1 ("Wikipedia Nerds", who enjoy shallow consumption across a wide range of topics) and #2 (who enjoy digging deeply into a small number of topics). His conclusion rings true with me:
It strikes me that for the Set #1 [books and blogs] are substitutes and for set #2 they are complements but given that there are many more Wikipedia Nerds on net they are substitutes.Personally, I am more in the #2 camp. For example, I read a number of blogs on food and agriculture issues, but none of them can come close to replacing works like Vaclav Smil's Feeding the World (a true masterpiece for anyone interested in truly understanding the world food system in a holistic way).
As someone who recently started blogging, I have another question - does blogging crowd out doing other types of work??
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