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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

#131

Post by agumonkey »

chki wrote: post #51
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've recently been shown a lot of ads for a service called "blinkist" where the idea is to provide short summaries of non-fiction books and I think your comment captures why that is a very bad idea. Reading and capturing an idea takes time; it can't be properly substituted by a few minutes of "listening to crucial insights from leading thinkers while you’re on the go." Their business model is in a way the complete op…

I'd say it's mostly that our brain has ~resistance (ideas are complex network, and we all have our own). Taking time ensure deep massaging. Also being relaxed and not hurried is probably a more favorable state of mind to "massage". It also allows for daydreaming about related ideas and inspirations that the text causes. Pleasure breeds memory and understanding.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#132

Post by vinceguidry »

rsanheim wrote: post #130
vinceguidry wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books, sliced by chapter, in an RSS feed reader. So I can read, say, a NYT article, then chapter one of a book, then maybe a blog post, then chapter one of a different book, then a long-form article, then chapter two of the first book.

you are missing the point of reading anything long form

Are you saying you never put a book down and pick it back up later?

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#133

Post by agumonkey »

kashyapc wrote: post #101
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…

The great Roman emporer, Marcus Aurelius, says the following in the beginning of his book, Meditations : To read attentively—not to be satisfied with “just getting the gist of it.”

"heh, marcus, we meet again"

-- everybody since

These days I take reading not as a data input but as a personal game. Authors ideas are mostly a way to let me have my own little intellectual creative game. It avoid reading from authority, passive absorption, weakening of thinking.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#134

Post by sidkhanooja »

I've been an avid reader since I was seven years old - I stopped in college (almost completely), but it was during my internship and job that I started reading vociferously again.

Nowadays after I finish the book, I try to review the books I've read on Instagram in the form of a post or a story - some people go to the extent of unfollowing me (seeing it as a stupid use case for the service), but some people I know IRL have also started reading the same books I finish.

Not every distraction is a force for evil.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#135

Post by II2II »

rgifford wrote: post #81
krishna2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the way Ray Bradbury writes about this in Fahrenheit 451. When you read books, you have time to think about it, re-read it and question it. Whereas while watching video, things move so fast that the decision is made up for you.

> I liked the way Ray Bradbury writes about this in Fahrenheit 451. When you read books, you have time to think about it, re-read it and question it. Whereas while watching video, things move so fast that the decision is made up for you. You can literally watch a video at any pace you want. I don't get romanticism around books and I can't help but eye roll when someone a) gushes about reading or b) waxes poetic about…

Yes, consuming audio and video for information has improved in recent years. It is now practical to change the playback speed and return to a particular point using transcripts. While these tools are not universally available, they are certainly gaining traction for educational content. On the other hand, it is not quite the same as reading a text for the reasons described by TuringTest.

> We have access to nearly every book, article, paper, video, song, etc. ever written or recorded within seconds.

While I have some reservations about digital texts, I agree that the situation is far better than it was 30 years ago. I fear that many people have forgotten how long it used to take to find information in the past, never mind obtain it, never mind the financial cost.

As for those reservations, they are mostly the product of the digital environment that we have created and accepted. They have very little to do with access to access to or the nature of books. The article hinted at this when it mentioned greed. Common dedicated e-readers are designed to sell books as much as designed to read books. Most websites are designed to deliver advertising as much as delivering content. General purpose devices present a continuous stream of distractions that leave us victim to our own vices. It does not have to be that way, but it takes a proactive approach for it to be otherwise.

We would be better served if we acknowledged the shortcomings of electronic texts (as well as audio and video delivery) then took the initiative to address them.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#137

Post by sjcsjc »

chki wrote: post #51
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've recently been shown a lot of ads for a service called "blinkist" where the idea is to provide short summaries of non-fiction books and I think your comment captures why that is a very bad idea. Reading and capturing an idea takes time; it can't be properly substituted by a few minutes of "listening to crucial insights from leading thinkers while you’re on the go." Their business model is in a way the complete op…

I can think of one non-fiction book in particular that benefits hugely from being read as a summary[0]. The E-Myth contains some great information, but the storytelling style it is written in is absolutely excruciating.

[0] https://sivers.org/book/EMythRevisited (I liked this summary - I found the link a few weeks ago on here. Thanks to https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sivers)

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#138

Post by chiefalchemist »

lbacaj wrote: post #61
chiefalchemist wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you...hit button, have it rewind some fixed amount of time (10 secs a tap?) and then email / store a text transcript of that segment? __That__ might be something I'd like to try.

For sure planning the rewinds by second but even more I’m planning sentence rewinds so one could rewind sentence by sentence and even saving snippets of one or more sentences.. I hadn’t thought about emailing that though, it’s a solid idea thank you.

To be clear, I don't care if the text is the __exact__ bit I want to save or not. A bit too much on either end is time. I can always edit (if necessary). My immediate want / need would simply be the capture.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#140

Post by navbaker »

whatusername wrote: post #113
criddell wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think fiction can be shrunk down, but I think lots of non-fiction books can. I'm thinking specifically of some books that I've read in the past couple of years that include: * Deep Work * Influence * Thinking Fast and Slow * Predictably Irrational * Getting Things Done * How to Win Friends and Influence People I think all of these books suffer from the common pattern of present an idea then a bunch of example…

I agree completely about non-fiction books. There are certainly some fiction books that could use some shrinking down (For Exhibit A: Crossroads of Twilight -- book 10 of the Wheel of Time)

I’m surprised you made it that far! I stopped reading after (I think it was) book 4 when I realized it could be summarized as “the company travels a few miles down a river for 800 pages”.
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