Ultimately it ends up devaluing my conversation and could make for an awkward experience. Better to be oblivious to something rather than semi-educated. So if I'm honest and say "no, I haven't read that," the person I'm speaking with can fill me in and we can have a great talk.

There's a little term I came across a few years ago that's brilliant: info snacking. Paralleled with a healthy diet (food), too much "snacking" can result in poor health. Same thing here: without substance you're but a balloon waiting to be popped.

This isn't meant to disparage either your point or the idea being discussed, but there are some things that cannot be condensed without destroying their meaning.

As just one example, on reading the history of the Vietnam War, it becomes obvious that those who moved us into the conflict simply didn't understand Vietnam and ought to have studied longer and deeper before committing troops to an unwinnable war fought over a misunderstood principle. This is obvious now, but only to those willing to read more, and deeper, to the degree that they actually understand the topic.

This obviously doesn't apply to everything -- many topics can be safely condensed -- but the risk remains that an issue will be condensed to a state of incomprehensibility with the best of intentions.

For another example, it is the attractiveness of of tl;dr that make many people think science is a collection of facts. Or that Frankenstein is the monster, not his maker. Or that "decimated" means completely destroyed. Or that "literally" means figuratively. And so forth. Most worthwhile ideas can't be meaningfully compressed past a certain point.

I see it as our brains adapting to the information overburden that we feel is being imposed on us. As a result, those learning to adapt are creating four categories of information: (1) Stuff I need to know (2) Stuff I should know (3) Stuff I'd like to know (4) Stuff I don't care about

Content shortening/summarization helps augment our ability to quantify what fits into 2, 3, and 4. If I read the first paragraph of a traditionally written journalistic piece, I know where it fits before the second paragraph. But a precious small percentage of online content is written in that manner -- first paragraph giving the reader enough information to know what to do next. (There's a whole rant on our lost ability to write, but that's for later.) So since a smaller and smaller percentage of potentially viable information is written traditionally, automated summaries (should) help us decide sooner where something fits.

Does that make sense or am I just spewing madness?