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Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

theparisreview.org

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Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#21

Post by marvindanig »

lemoncucumber wrote: post #18
marvindanig wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love books because they create time and space to be alone with a thought. Spot on and cue page turns! Fan open a book and read horizontally. Have intermediate stops between chunks of text on two well-formatted pages and then transition to next. A second to soak in the content in between with time and space makes for a huge difference! Scrolling animation can never achieve or serve this sort of efficiency! I recen…

I think you're confused about the meanings of the terms horizontal and vertical reading. The linked piece does not use the term "vertical reading" to mean reading on a vertically scrolling screen vs. reading printed pages in a book. Rather, the author uses "vertical reading" to mean deep reading as compared to shallow/broad reading: > Birkerts coins his own terms: the deep, devotional practice of “vertical” reading h…

Yes, it means the same thing: skimming vs. soaking in with "duration state" in between. Unless one set of labels appear more valuable to you than the other…

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#22

Post by graeme »

nothrows wrote: post #16

I recently discovered I score very low on VVIQ. Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. I don't have full on Aphantasia. But listening to how for other people reading a book is like watching a movie in their heads blows my mind. Being able to imagine with any level of depth sounds pretty amazing. As a kid I never really played pretend or was into fiction. But I'm curious that possibly long form reading is on the d…

FWIW, I love reading and fiction, but am also quite low on vividness. Imagination never really equally visual images to me, I can still imagine scenes without seeing them, if that makes sense.

Poetry, on the other hand....there are some types I like, but there are certain poems that seem to be made only to make imagery. Can't get into much of it.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#23

Post by lbacaj »

I think distractions are just the beginning of our issues, a much bigger factor on how much I can read is Time.

As we become adults, with responsibilities Time is incredibly hard to find. Big readers tend to be productive people and as such the more active and busy we are the harder it is to sit down and read. This might sound like a straight forward problem but I find myself bookmarking great articles or writing down great books I heard about only to never really find the Time to go back and read them.

As a little shameless self promotion this problem of not having enough time to read led me to build an App that lets me listen to any article from the web. It converts the article to Audio using some amazing open advancements in AI/ML. Now when I’m standing on the train with a coffee in my hand and holding a pole with the other I can get through a ton of this content from the web distraction free.

You can check the app out here: https://articulu.com

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#24

Post by Scarbutt »

everythingswan wrote: post #10

I've come to love books intensely. Not only because I enjoy learning--before I read books, I found blogs to be great educators. I love books because they create time and space to be alone with a thought. It gives me time to consider things that I normally have no space for. I remember Seth Godin saying once that every business book can be summarized in just a few pages but the book itself is a story. I think it goes…

I think you should mention that you are talking about non novel non fiction stuff, like self improving and technical books, which is an entirely different world of reading (as in more learning than pleasure), at least that's what I understood from you.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#26

Post by jmcphers »

retsibsi wrote: post #12
marvindanig wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but Kindle != web. And that is huge bummer for me! I generally prefer reading everything online, or not read at all.

I don't know if this addresses your issue (whether it's about the content, or about e.g. being able to use hyperlinks), but Kobo ereaders come with a version of Pocket preinstalled, so when you see an interesting web page on your computer, you can send it to your ereader with the press of a button. Apparently there's something similar for Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/

Instapaper integrates with the Send to Kindle feature and will mail you a "newspaper" with all of the articles you've saved to Instapaper in the last week. It's fantastic.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#27

Post by davidmr »

gdubs wrote: post #11

My wife and I recently embarked on the 'Great Books' list from "How to read a Book" [1]. It's a nice contrast to the more scattershot reading that happens online. If you're interested in how technology might cause self-interruptions that make things like sitting down with a book more difficult, I recommend checking out "The Distracted Mind". [2] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book 2: http://mitpress.m…

I spent a year at a “Great Books” college whose program Adler helped found. It was a really amazing luxury to be able to spend so much time on it (I left after freshman year, so I only got through the Greeks).

Ultimately, St John’s generates a lot of lawyers and humanities grad students, but not a whole lot else without extra pre-grad school to school to get some of the STEM prereqs out of the way. I love that the school generates humanities scholars, but it’s not my bag, so I moved on.

If I had the money, I’d love to go back and finish when I retire, but at 40 I’m already not as smart as I was in college, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be too dumb to be a useful classmate when I retire!

If you haven’t gotten to Euclid yet, do yourself a favor and get the Heath translations with his notes. A few of them are really, really hard for people trained in late second-millennia mathematics to be able to get through without some hints.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#28

Post by burtonator »

I'm actually working on an app specifically to address this problem.

https://getpolarized.io/

It builds on the idea of 'bookmarks' and we have a new take on them called 'pagemarks' which is basically a box that spans multiple pages.

This way you can keep track of the parts of the book you've read and jump around.

I like reading multiple textbooks, articles, etc and go back and forth often.

This allows me to easily suspend and resume.

I worked on a proof of concept about 6 months ago and I've been expanding it in my spare time.

You can read about it here:

https://getpolarized.io/incremental-reading.html

Polar is free and Open Source btw.

It blew up on HN a few months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960

I'm about to re-announce as we're just in the process of porting it to the web to make it more accessible to people (mobile, tablets, chrome OS, etc.).

It goes FAR behind this though and supports document management, offline, and supports capturing web pages for offline usage and archival.

Additionally it supports annotation so you can take any page and add highlights, comments and flashcards.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#29

Post by Swizec »

lbacaj wrote: post #23

I think distractions are just the beginning of our issues, a much bigger factor on how much I can read is Time. As we become adults, with responsibilities Time is incredibly hard to find. Big readers tend to be productive people and as such the more active and busy we are the harder it is to sit down and read. This might sound like a straight forward problem but I find myself bookmarking great articles or writing dow…

> but I find myself bookmarking great articles or writing down great books I heard about only to never really find the Time to go back and read them.

Try replacing “can’t find time” with “not a priority”. It means the same in practice and makes for a huge shift in perception and your own personal feekings towards stuff. Especially in the guilt department.

You have more important things to do and that’s okay. When you come across a book that’s important enough you will magically have time for it. Priorities are fun like that.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#30

Post by bdamm »

mathieuh wrote: post #19
nothrows wrote: post #16

I recently discovered I score very low on VVIQ. Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. I don't have full on Aphantasia. But listening to how for other people reading a book is like watching a movie in their heads blows my mind. Being able to imagine with any level of depth sounds pretty amazing. As a kid I never really played pretend or was into fiction. But I'm curious that possibly long form reading is on the d…

I mean, the level of CGI and game engine textures we have is almost indistinguishable from real life. Perhaps because we have access to the super high-fidelity, interactive simulations, we've lost the practice of imagining so vividly?

This is the fear as I watch my 6-yr old son enjoy oodles of video time. But what to do? Create an equally damaging anxiety of self-denial? What an age, for better or for worse.
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