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What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

washingtonpost.com

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Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#31

Post by mapcars »

majos wrote: post #8
hyko wrote: post #4

the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day” — some 100,000 words’ worth of information - seems like an odd and misleading statistic.

Yeah, that's silly. 34 gb is 34 billion bytes, so if each byte is a character and the average word about 5 characters, 34 gb should be more like 6.8 billion words. Also, most of that 34 gb is probably video anyway, in which case we may as well say the ancients consumed many gb of information per day in the form of looking at the world around them.

You are mistaking words for information. This message has few dozens words but much more information :)

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#32

Post by noxToken »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #26
jasode wrote: post #23

First off, I haven't studied Maryanne Wolf's neuroscientific research on "deep reading" and its claimed benefits. But, as a person who has read most of the major thick books like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Les Miserables, Middlemarch, Proust, and reading cover-to-cover the old computer books like the 3-ring binders of C Language[1], my lifetime reading experience could offer counterpoint to why "deep reading" seems to b…

That was a long paragraph, but I agree with the general premise that a lot of books are tripe worse than TV shows and video games, so we shouldn't put them on a pedestal.

> a lot of books are tripe worse than TV shows and video games

I've never been a fan of this line of thinking. There are plenty of people who use critical thinking skills and participate in mentally stimulating activities throughout the day. When it's over, they just want to relax. So they watch shows like Family Guy, read basic action novels, or play Grand Theft Auto for an hour or two.

Why does everything have to be in pursuit of knowledge or something that contributes to a community?

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#33

Post by tech-no-logical »

hyko wrote: post #4

the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day” — some 100,000 words’ worth of information - seems like an odd and misleading statistic.

seems it stems from a study called "How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers"

from the management summary :

"In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. (...) We defined “information” as flows of data delivered to people and we measured the bytes, words, and hours of consumer information. Video sources (moving pictures) dominate bytes of information, with 1.3 zettabytes from television and approximately 2 zettabytes of computer games."

I found a copy here : http://group47.com/HMI_2009_ConsumerReport_Dec9_2009.pdf

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#34

Post by Bedon292 »

ebullientocelot wrote: post #6
dijit wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also demonstratively untrue. 100,000 words is, by itself almost certainly under a megabyte. (Avg word length (let’s say 6) * number of words = number of bytes) If you count -everything- then you’re basically insinuating that people on data caps are either consuming less (and because it’s an average, everyone else consumes much more) or outright claiming that you can quantify data that is consumed outside of a co…

Agree. Also, even watching videos for 24 hours it seems unlikely that you'd go through 34GB worth. Maybe the size of video files has gone way up since I was a movie downloader, but 12 2 hour movies is probably < 34GB..

It really depends on where you measure it. A 4k BluRay is somewhere around 60-80GB for a single movie. But then when that is uncompressed and sent to the actual screens you are talking multiple gigabits a second. With 4k60 being somewhere in the 12 to 18 gbit range at the peaks. If it were at 16gbit for 2 hours, that would be ~14TB of information transferred.

If you are talking streaming bandwidth, Netflix says 25mbit is required for 4k video streaming. If it were to use all of that for 2 hours that is 22GB for a movie. Though its likely only using half that. I haven't actually measured it. And then there is the same inflation to what is sent to screen.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#35

Post by raindropm »

jasode wrote: post #23

First off, I haven't studied Maryanne Wolf's neuroscientific research on "deep reading" and its claimed benefits. But, as a person who has read most of the major thick books like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Les Miserables, Middlemarch, Proust, and reading cover-to-cover the old computer books like the 3-ring binders of C Language[1], my lifetime reading experience could offer counterpoint to why "deep reading" seems to b…

This is why many of us go to HN comments first instead of reading the actual article.

Now I'm a bit ashamed haha.

Anyway, I've read her book, and have to admit that I skim quite a bit. Her writing style is deep and informative, but with a lot of literary allusions. I found my knowledge and life experience is still inadequate to understand everything she wrote. Overall an interesting read though!

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#36

Post by madeuptempacct »

noxToken wrote: post #32
madeuptempacct wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a long paragraph, but I agree with the general premise that a lot of books are tripe worse than TV shows and video games, so we shouldn't put them on a pedestal.

> a lot of books are tripe worse than TV shows and video games I've never been a fan of this line of thinking. There are plenty of people who use critical thinking skills and participate in mentally stimulating activities throughout the day. When it's over, they just want to relax. So they watch shows like Family Guy, read basic action novels, or play Grand Theft Auto for an hour or two. Why does everything have to b…

I am not a fan of "basic action novels", because at that point you can go play GTA or play paintball, and you would get way more entertainment out of it. I guess I am arrogant in the sense that I like reading books that at least have a competent human being as the author, i.e. not Sanderson or whoever wrote that supernatural detective series that a certain demographic used to read.

But I see what you mean - there is a time and a place for anything.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#37

Post by EGreg »

jasode wrote: post #23

First off, I haven't studied Maryanne Wolf's neuroscientific research on "deep reading" and its claimed benefits. But, as a person who has read most of the major thick books like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Les Miserables, Middlemarch, Proust, and reading cover-to-cover the old computer books like the 3-ring binders of C Language[1], my lifetime reading experience could offer counterpoint to why "deep reading" seems to b…

For anyone who found the above too long, basically she means that deep reading often wastes too much time and you don’t know ahead of time what to read. She didn’t mention that you can check other shorter sources before you commit to reading, like reading this comment before hers.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#38

Post by habitue »

mapcars wrote: post #31
majos wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's silly. 34 gb is 34 billion bytes, so if each byte is a character and the average word about 5 characters, 34 gb should be more like 6.8 billion words. Also, most of that 34 gb is probably video anyway, in which case we may as well say the ancients consumed many gb of information per day in the form of looking at the world around them.

You are mistaking words for information. This message has few dozens words but much more information :)

Oh, no way. The information conveyed through human language is an abysmal drip compared to the actual number of letters used to spell it out.

Even without knowing anything semantic, compression algorithms can squeeze text down to much fewer bits. And both of our minds together have a shared dictionary of concepts and thoughts gzip doesn't have access to. The actual number of bits conveyed is rather low.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#39

Post by brainwad »

mapcars wrote: post #31
majos wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's silly. 34 gb is 34 billion bytes, so if each byte is a character and the average word about 5 characters, 34 gb should be more like 6.8 billion words. Also, most of that 34 gb is probably video anyway, in which case we may as well say the ancients consumed many gb of information per day in the form of looking at the world around them.

You are mistaking words for information. This message has few dozens words but much more information :)

English contains around one or two bits of information per character, so actually they are basically correct. See http://www-isl.stanford.edu/~cover/papers/transIT/0413cove.p... and http://www.anthology.aclweb.org/J/J92/J92-1002.pdf.

Re: What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

#40

Post by EGreg »

EGreg wrote: post #37
jasode wrote: post #23

First off, I haven't studied Maryanne Wolf's neuroscientific research on "deep reading" and its claimed benefits. But, as a person who has read most of the major thick books like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Les Miserables, Middlemarch, Proust, and reading cover-to-cover the old computer books like the 3-ring binders of C Language[1], my lifetime reading experience could offer counterpoint to why "deep reading" seems to b…

For anyone who found the above too long, basically she means that deep reading often wastes too much time and you don’t know ahead of time what to read. She didn’t mention that you can check other shorter sources before you commit to reading, like reading this comment before hers.

TLDR: Read short HN comments before articles / parents.
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