Artists are always disappointed by their audience’s attention-spans. . . . As artists, it would be a hell of a lot easier if our audiences were more tolerant of our penchant for boring them. We’d get to explore a lot more ideas without worrying about tarting them up with easy-to-swallow chocolate coatings of entertainment. We like to think of shortened attention spans as a product of the information age, but check this out:

To be sure one thing necessary above all: if one is to practice reading as an art in this way, something needs to be un-learned most thoroughly in these days.

In other words, if my book is too boring, it’s because you're not paying enough attention. Writers say this stuff all the time, but this quote isn't from this century or the last. It’s from the preface to Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morals,” published in 1887.

Yeah, our attention-spans are different today, but they aren't necessarily shorter.

—— Cory Doctorow, “Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books”