The rise of everyday writing

Something easily forgotten but remarkable when noticed–[we write more as a society today than ever before](http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/how-successful-networks-nurture-good-ideas/all/). An excerpt from [Clive Thompson’s new book](http://smarterthanyouthink.net/):

> Every day, we collectively produce millions of books’ worth of writing. Globally we send 154.6 billion emails, more than 400 million tweets, and over 1 million blog posts and around 2 million blog comments on WordPress. On Facebook, we post about 16 billion words. Altogether, we compose some 3.6 trillion words every day on email and social media — the equivalent of 36 million books.* (The entire US Library of Congress, by comparison, holds around 23 million books.)

> And what makes this explosion truly remarkable is what came before: comparatively little. Before the Internet, most people rarely wrote for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction after graduating from high school or college.