Electronic snacking

Electronic snacking is a new way of consumption by small portions.

Examples of electronic snacking in every-day life:
• Music (death of albums - new era of single tracks. Evolution: cassettes→ CDs→ MP3→ ITunes and phone ringtones)
• Film/TV (episodes, mini montages)
• Biz (retail clinics, Google bait)
• Games (short-lasting games, or levels of the game – for example, a 30-seconds game on Nintendo DS)
• Culture (popularity of post-cards for studying the history of events, mini-art pictures, emblems on T-shirts, Japanese haiku, Abraham Lincoln’s 272-word Gettsyburg Address in a YouTube-friendly two minutes etc.)
• Fashion (switching from the loyalty towards particular brand to mixing brands, mix of luxury brands with fast-fashion ones)

I think that electronic snacking appeared inevitably in our society. In the era of massive informatisation, it is more and more difficult to absorb tons of information in a full format. Instead of consuming one whole cake, people tend to prefer trying different tastes by consuming small peaces of different cakes. Assortment is so huge, that it is just boring to make any particular preferences, choosing something separate.

In the article An Epic History of Snack Culture in an interesting manner the evolution of Snack Culture (as of 15000 B.C.!!) is illustrated. Surprisingly, even inventions like tattoos, electric telegraph, readers digest, etc. made their contribution to this new way of consumption, called Snacking. The most modern ways of Electronic Snacking are: IPod (2001), The ny times goes RSS (2002), IPod Wending machine; Youtube; Current TV (2005), The 1 second film (2007).