Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

theparisreview.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 175 posts

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#31

Post by skandl »

duxup wrote: post #7
KorematsuFred wrote: post #2

Did a small survey last year on this point and discovered that while technology might sound distracting people are actually spending more time reading/viewing stuff they like more lot more than before. We found that among teens for example very few people read anything from news websites very rarely but almost every single teen had read at least one article in depth on very niche topic that appealed to them. (For exa…

Totally anecdotal story / corner case: I was a terrible reader growing up, I had ADD before the days when they diagnosed that. My son also has ADD and strangely, he is an avid reader. I've caught him reading two books at once (both in his lap) and swapping between them and he was comprehending them (I did some Q&A). At least on the very surface to me that might mean that reading is not necessarily antithetical to som…

That's impressive!

I agree, I think where distraction comes into play is an inhibitor to actually get started reading.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#32

Post by yebyen »

How apt that this is posted today! I've been tracking my reading progress on the Google SRE Workbook via Beeminder, and today I am derailing my goal because I am far behind. [1]

I started tracking my progress because I wanted to see how much I can actually read in a day on a regular basis without losing focus and abandoning it, I even got a Kindle because it was on sale.

Long story short, 10 pages a day was what I settled on as a reasonable goal, and here I am not keeping up with that.

I actually should mention too that there is a person on GitHub[2] who converts texts to epub/mobi as a hobby, and that's how I saved $50 on my copy of the SRE book and workbook, Kindle edition, which are freely available in HTML format, thanks Google[3]!

[1]: https://www.beeminder.com/yebyenw/srebook

[2]: https://github.com/captn3m0/google-sre-ebook

[3]: https://landing.google.com/sre/books/

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#33

Post by Kluny »

yebyen wrote: post #32

How apt that this is posted today! I've been tracking my reading progress on the Google SRE Workbook via Beeminder, and today I am derailing my goal because I am far behind. [1] I started tracking my progress because I wanted to see how much I can actually read in a day on a regular basis without losing focus and abandoning it, I even got a Kindle because it was on sale. Long story short, 10 pages a day was what I se…

Ten pages a day is a lot! I'm an avid for-fun reader, and ten or fifteen pages is about what I manage while reading during breakfast, lunch, and sometimes for a few minutes before bed. That's with pretty lightweight pop-non-fiction as well. Maybe it would be better to reduce the goal to something consistently manageable, and don't beat yourself up!

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#34

Post by eigenvalue »

burtonator wrote: post #28

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 su…

Very cool! At least for me, so much of my reading is done on my mobile devices (e.g, iPhone, iPad) that not supporting those via an app is pretty much a deal killer for me. But if I could have one place to read PDF files, saved websites (e.g., like Pocket; btw, Pocket integration would seem to make a lot of sense for Polarized) where annotations/highlights are also stored in the cloud (say, in Dropbox), and I could access this on the go on a mobile device, I would certainly use your service.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#35

Post by int_19h »

marvindanig wrote: post #21
lemoncucumber wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is completely orthogonal to scrolling vs pages, however.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#36

Post by int_19h »

josteink wrote: post #3

Medium matters. For in-depth, “digital” reading the only thing I have which works for me is my Kindle. It’s distractionfree by design, and that’s why I love it. It’s definitely not just another redundant screen.

A smartphone can be equally distraction free if you block notifications (a single button on modern phones). Kindle goes fullscreen, so all you see is the book text.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#38

Post by int_19h »

For me, eInk readers, and especially smartphones, boosted the amounts I've read (which were substantial to begin with).

For eInk, it was mostly because I could take it to more places, stuffed with many books. When you can get through a book in 2-3 days, a 2-week vacation needs quite a few!

But smartphones were the real gift. Now I have all my books right there in my pocket whenever I go, so in any situation where I have to wait (lines etc), I can just whip it up and continue reading. Even if it's 10-15 minutes at a time, it all adds up. This doesn't work well for technical books because of interruptions, but it's perfect for fiction.

Another nice things about phones for reading is OLED screens. Because they're "perfectly black", I find it to be the best low-light reader for night reading in the dark, before sleep.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#39

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

I think that's great. That said, I've tried audio (books) and it's just not the same as reading (print). Reading, to me, seems to engage the mind in a deeper way. It is, nearly by its nature, more proactive and participatory. On the other hand, watching and listening is far more passive. You don't work to consume, you just wait for it to come to you.

For example, when you read you can pause, re-read, etc. On the other hand, who watches the news (for example) and uses pause and/or 30 second rewind? Not to get off topic but my personal theory is this is why journalism today is so shoddy - because it can be. It's just an endless stream and no one is pausing long enough to say "Hey! Wait a minute!!"

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#40

Post by leppr »

tgarv wrote: post #17
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…

Oh wow, I didn't know that was a thing but that describes me perfectly. I can sort of picture faces to some extent, but trying to visualize a house or a scene is almost impossible to me. I find it frustrating when trying to think of a "memory palace" because I can't even think about what the front door of the palace would look like, let along intricate places for things within it.

Your "memory palace" could simply be a row of doors where different sounds come from each one.

Or a jungle where you have to crawl and climb over obstacles to move around.

Imagination isn't just visual. Just because you can't "picture" something in your head doesn't mean you have no imagination.

Post reply on HN