Enjoyed the article, there seems to be quite a lot of writing about at the moment concerning the question of digital vs. analog/online vs. print journalism etc. My PC crashed recently and I've been without it for a week, and it has made me wonder about the advantages/disadvantages of consuming music and discussion around it so overwhelmingly through the internet.
I think its true that you tend to scan text on a screen with a certain passivity or carelessness, perhaps the medium encourages constant and rapid information processing in a way that words on a page do not? Also, I wonder if the interaction around the discussion of music you find in online forums/blogs is somewhat self-perpetuating and performative... This is probably not something particular to the internet, but I find that a lot of the arguments I get into over music on the net become quite unimportant to me once I'm out of the loop (as I have been, by-and-large, for the last few weeks). I suppose interactivity has to have much more invested in it for someone to make or seek out a fanzine, whereas with internet discussion you can end up discussing things automatically as you type.
The big 'on the other hand' - I've learnt a lot about music from forums/blogs, I enjoy discussing music in this manner and I've definitely felt deprived of information and new music since being partially cut off from the web...
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