So I'm sitting in the cafe at the Los Angeles Central Library reading "We the Media" by Dan Gillmor and I've stopped to scribble notes on my steno pad when the whole digital thing goes off like a nuclear blast in my head. Why the hell am I writing with pencil and paper when I'm going to have to transcribe it all over again to write my book review? I have my laptop here, so I might as well type my notes directly into a text document so that later I can quickly copy and paste anything good that I come up with, saving myself a step.

Then it occurs to me...

Of course, we'll always want paper in a pinch. It's just easier to handle and a lot faster to take notes on than, say, a Blackberry thumb keyboard. But wait, why should I assume that? I should time it!

So I check the second hand on my watch and then put a sentence to paper.

It takes about 10 seconds. I pull out my Blackberry.

About 10 seconds!

That's when this next thought occurs to me. To really capture my experience of feeling suddenly liberated from my one-medium mindset, I will need to show you my notes and turn this into a media post (hence, the images above).

Tapping a single medium to deliver content is about as exciting as vanilla ice cream (though I must admit part of me thoroughly enjoys plain flavors).

But as we master the tools, we will learn to create stories so suited to their multiple media that we'll wonder how they could have been told any other way, just as we say a good book cannot really be duplicated on screen or a good film novelized.