The Internet is killing storytelling
timesonline.co.uk
timesonline.co.uk
http://www.fanfiction.net/ http://www.fictionpress.com/ http://www.scribd.com/ (And lots of others...)
I rest my case.
Heck, even if every native-born English speaker stopped writing and reading novels, there's a good chance that some community of Japanese Otaku would arise to lovingly curate it forever.
The 3 minute pop tune didn't kill the symphony. Just because it's not what the mainstream is doing, doesn't mean it's dead. Note that classical music has found a new home, appreciated by the mainstream in movie soundtracks. Your community might be waning, but it won't die. Sometimes, a downturn can even be a blessing!
Read it all--it's worth it. Plus, that this was even written (not to mention well-received) poses a fine counterpoint to any argument stating that storytelling on the internet is dead: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/169873399/clackity-noise
What I believe is a more appropriate angle to take is that the nature of reading itself is changing. Reading tends to be one-way, whereas human nature tends to crave communication more - hence the shorter stories / tweets / facebook popularity.
But this in itself tends to build a longer narrative - I've been reading HN now for well over a year (much longer than I've spent on a novel) and though the items themselves are short snippets, due to my interest they tend to form chapters of narratives in general directions: programming, hacking the body, start-up life and culture.
And one of the amazing things is that I get to contribute and write part of the story as it is unfolding - often with unexpected results! That is something that you just can't get from a book - the interaction is of an entirely different nature, yet can still very much be 'consumed' in the same way if you choose to
[my two cents worth, and maybe a little rambling - but then it was kinda inspired by the parent link...]
Not to mention that, in the defense of Twitter and other short-burst mediums, treating them with the same standards as a long-form narrative Misses The Dang Point by a rather large margin. The rising popularity of burst mediums is because they're /dialogue enablers/, not because they offer an alternative to a good novel. Lamenting Twitter's effect on storytelling is like blaming cell phones for the decline of Broadway.
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=572887
In other news, culture is in a process of steady decline at least since the invention of the written word.
No seriously, the long narrative is dying. I just finished "Anna Karenina" and am seriously thinking about "War and Peace" for the holidays (perhaps all the holidays to come, based on it's length) and I can say it was more of a struggle for me to engage the long-form narrative now than it was 10 years ago. And being a techie, one of my key competitive advantages is being able to consume big, sometimes really boring, books.
After all, what's the first reply to any technical question on the web? Have you RTFM? Or on a aggregator like here? Have you RTFA?
Most of the time the answer is "no"
Too bad we Ashton Kutchner can't teach us physics via tweets. We've have a freaking nation of rocket scientists.
(Having said all of that, I understand we have a large contingent of people going through college. Hopefully since you're supposed to be working those reading muscles out a lot this won't apply as much to you guys as it does to the rest of us)
There's such a culture clash right now between people raised in traditional media and publishing cultures and those who come from technology backgrounds, and neither side seems to appreciate the other.