If I may shift gears a little, I'd like to address another section of And Then There's This---the part about indie rock. I promise that there's a political point to be made here, if you'll bear with me. But the section on indie rock really illustrates why I'm not overly concerned about the problem of nanostories, nor do I think there's anything new about the issue of flash-in-the-pan stories.

Bill writes about the constant churn of the indie rock hype machine that's largely built through online hype/distribution networks and events like South By Southwest, which happens in my hometown of Austin. I could definitely relate to his concerns about how many interesting bands rise up in the hype machine, are the flavor of the month, and then seem to disappear without a trace. In the meantime, they try to squeeze every penny they can out of their momentary fame through touring, and then they usually just die off.

Bill seems to blame the hype machine for this. Bloggers fall all over themselves to post singles by small indie rock bands and blow a bunch of smoke up their asses, and then the bands seem to disappear and the bloggers rush up onto the next big thing. And if you really liked the last big thing, you're standing there going, "Hey, what about the Annuals/Tokyo Police Club/Tapes 'n Tapes?" But I have to say, this whole cycle is nothing new. Since at least the beginning of rock and roll, there have been flash-in-the-pan acts, acts of medium popularity, and blockbusters. Today's flash in the pan is tomorrow's obscure record lovingly remembered by a collector. If you follow MP3 blogs that focus on older music as well as newer music, you'll be just as stunned by how many musicians in the pre-internet era were hot shit for two singles and then fell off the face of the earth. And how many had staying power. And many still do. I can think of a number of bands that have staying power that have really come of age in the era of internet distribution: TV On The Radio, Of Montreal, Jenny Lewis, Clap Your Hands, Grizzly Bear, and Beirut---all have at least one follow-up album that didn't sink below the waves, and in most cases, they continued to build a fan base.

What does this have to do with politics? Well, I'd argue we're worrying about the struggle between the momentary attention-grabbers and those things that will become history, be remembered as important. And it's hard to tell in the melee what's going to matter. If I was around in 1960, I'd probably dismiss the whole finding that radio listeners and TV viewers of the presidential debate had different takes on who won. That strikes me immediately as a fluffy distraction story. In truth, it became a profound statement about the direction of our politics, sometimes given more profundity than it deserves. No one would have guessed in 1963 that the Beach Boys would be the single biggest influence on indie rock in 2009, either. At a certain point, we have to do our best and worry less about how much we can control the outcomes.

I'm more worried about the effect of TV and its allergy to depth or context. A blogger can build context by working at the same set of stories every day---like Ezra, who Bill mentions, but most great bloggers tend to have "beats" they work that their audiences know well. (Ezra's is easy to see because he takes more pains to define his beat, and most other bloggers are a little eclectic.) And frankly, you get a lot more depth even in two written paragraphs that any shouting match on some cable news network, or 15 second clip of a candidate statement.

I agree that people need to slow down a little. That's why I think I've drifted into collecting records again, because it's an older technology that requires more of your attention than hitting "shuffle" on an iPod does. But I think that the internet has a lot of potential to point us in the right direction, because above all, it's got people reading again. And clicking links to get context. Yes, it's still driven by the outrage-of-the minute mentality, but even by reading about it, we get more information and context than you could ever hope to get from TV.