Philip Greenspun of MIT argues that, before the Web, you could either write books or mid-sized articles of four to five pages. Publishing was constricted. source
When the internet first came about, he argues, it allowed for long articles – 20 to 30 pages – to be easily printed. But short bites didn’t make sense online. source
His argument concludes that blogging solved the biggest problem of the media age – now people can easily write short. Well, that’s what we’re doing, anyway. source