Short stories, like poems, have always been held in high esteem by the literati, but the general public much prefers novels. I suspect that this is going to change, perhaps quite soon, as devices such as Amazon's Kindle become more popular. Today we use a handheld, laptop, or desktop to read primarily because the information we want is published online. But as reading a computer screen becomes easier and more comfortable, the short attention span of recent generations,the the busy life that makes watching YouTube such a pleasant, and quick diversion, and the on/off nature of computers will conspire to make the short story considerably more appealing compared to the novel that it has been to date.
At the same time, I believe we will see that the capability of the computer to provide multi-media presentations will permit more lively and interactive stories, stories that appeal to more of our senses. And at first these will be experimental and costly as new technologies generally are, so the stories are likely to be start out short.
All in all, if I were able to invest in short stories, I would do it with great confidence that I had for once, finally gotten in on the ground floor of a largely unanticipated boom.
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