I wonder if the author did an analysis of how the Age of Speed helped Wall St. to come to its fabulous current state.

The reviewer says we "live in the age of speed." Maybe so. I see plenty of people doing things too quickly. But does that mean we live in the "age of speed?" How does it differ from the age of non-speed? Is it an improvement, an inevitability? Did we lose something? Would the financial disaster we're in right now have been better off without so much speed?

Before reading more about how to cope with the age of speed, I'd prefer to see something explaining just what it is. Otherwise I'm sure not going to spend my valuable time reading it. Right now it just sounds like a buzz phrase.

Thanks for the reminder! That was an enjoyable few days.

You're absolutely right! Where in the world do these clueless people come from that accuse the rest of the world of being 'clueless?' I've learned over the years that as soon as I hear someone shouting 'clueless' I can stop listening.

People who think news content is free and just floats about in the ether ready to be plucked remind me of people who go into a grocery store and are horribly shocked when they see something recognizable as an animal in the meat section. Well guess what meat comes from animals. And news comes from hardworking reporters, editors, systems people, et al. It costs money; it ain't for free. Most news worth reading on the internet came from someone who got paid to do it and then was put online by someone else.

I am so sick of hearing uninformed nonsense about 'information wanting to be free.'

The sooner we get over this 'everything is free' mentality the sooner the economy will come to life again.

Though I was a smart student this teacher didn't like my cursive handwriting. She wanted me to start over. So I came up with some incomprehensible combination of print and cursive. I can't think of any other 'failing' that I can attribute to a specific time and place but for this I can. Blame my 3rd grade teacher. She should have left well enough alone. What's most surprising these many years later is that she or some other teacher didn't stop me and say: what in the world is this horrible hybrid that you're writing!? Maybe they feared each intervention would just make it worse.................

Spare me the "we live in the blah blah blah age." That's what is spouted forth in every 'age' as a substitute for real thought.

There is little evidence that advertising does pay, and as the original article in WSJ points out, it's even less likely to do so in the coming months.

Finally there are some people like me who have a real distaste for advertising. It may just be that more people would prefer to pay small micropayments than to sort through junk advertising. That's the point of some responses. Micropayments may be the answer for both producers and consumers of whatever the 'age' is offering.

I happen to think you're right. This is particularly true if you focus on the producers of a product rather than the consumers. My particular perspective on this is newspapers which are slowly going out of business, for a number of reasons but one of which is that they're giving away their expensive content for free online. But newspapers are not alone. There are many good businesses that are going out of business due to free online replacements. I think most people knew that this party could not last (see Peggy Noonan in Saturday's WSJ on the GoldmansachsHead Disease, where the party never ends). I don't care what the hype says, nothing is free, including the internet.

But micropayments, at least in theory, offer a compromise: payment for the producer and low price for the consumer.

I always prefer print books and print papers. I've only met two people in my age group who prefer the web. Maybe we just grew up experiencing and understanding the virtue of slowly reading something and allowing it time to sink in. I've never personally experienced that on the web. I've read some very thoughtful stuff by some very smart people and I've read all sorts of other things that have proven valuable. But none match the slow and I think deeper understanding that comes from reading PRINT.

Tell me I'm a dinosaur or whatever. I know what I experience and the web doesn't begin to compare with print. I'm waiting for the day, and I think it will come, when I start seeing people who've grown up on the web come to the same conclusion. The question is how many companies that produce print products will still be around.

where!? any more jobs?

just kidding. good for you. i'm sure you're not alone in making a good living from perl. it still works, headache-inducing syntax and all.

Right you are. And when it's too late and there no longer is substantial journalism around people will say "hmm this online news is shit news", to misquote an earlier commentor. Unfortunately it will be too late.

I wonder why people don't compare journalism to baseball. If you want you can go and watch your local little league team. I have no doubt that it will be honestly enjoyable for some people. But many people want to see the best teams. So they pay the high prices to see MLB. But now that people can write their own stories on the web everyone thinks they're a journalist. They're not a journalist anymore than your local little leaguer is Sandy Koufax.

Online reminds me a lot of the 60s when the counterculture, of which I was a proud part, was going to revolutionize everything. It didn't. Some good came out of it. Some bad. One day online will sort itself out and we'll see what's good and what's bad. Unfortunately I'm afraid by that time that substantial journalism will be dead.

I agree with all you said. Except that journalism is dying and that what is on the web is a very sad and miserly imitation of it, doodads or no. I'm afraid that it is not evolving despite the wealth of opinion, not often disinterested opinion, to the contrary.

I'm afraid that when it is too late people will realize that it in fact did die and that the many claims of evolution were just flat out wrong. It is dying and no one seems to care, outside of journalists that is.

You want content, not doodads. I couldn't agree with you more. Unfortunately it gets less likely each day that you will continue to be able to get content, at least substantial, thoughtful, in-depth content.