21–30 of 108 posts
A pocket device without notifications. Can you even still imagine? I barely can, and it's only been eight years.
I miss my Palm TX. It managed to be so poor at almost everything it tried to do that uninterrupted reading was the only thing it was really good for. A pocket device without notifications. Can you even still imagine? I barely can, and it's only been eight years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Explain China's complete lack of development until very recently, then.
Google China's "century of humiliation". China was the world's biggest economy until the 1870s. Here's just one chart showing it. This is well known to everyone who has studied economic history. http://urbanlogics.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/share-of-gd... You could have asked your question with more humility and less abrasion. Just because you don't know about a topic doesn't mean there isn't reams of research abo…
Chinese technological leadership petered out after the Four Great Inventions ( so around 800AD ) and the economy grew on the back of trade.
The Century of Humiliation took place because China was already well behind the technological edge by that time.
This line from the article really caught my attention: > In sum, Wolf says, the paper reading brain has better memory, more imagination, immersion, and patience, and more knowledge than the screen reading brain. I've been torn for years about how to feel about my reading and writing habits. I love reading physical books, especially when I'm trying to develop a deep understanding of some topic, and I have, at times, m…
I used to think this was about the act of writing in itself - that doing it by hand forced me to be more conscious of the information - but writing with e.g. an Apple Pencil on an iPad is just as useless as typing.
I'd really like to figure this out because I love the idea of searchable notes that are available anywhere, any time, and aren't dependent on a dead tree for their longevity, but I haven't found the solution yet. I have a theory that it might be related to the fundamental experience (friction, texture) of a pen and paper, so I'm considering a reMarkable[1] but I'm wary of obsolescence.
>In these later letters, Wolf sounds like the kind of alarmist digital enthusiasts often deride. After all, they say, reading is not dying; it’s thriving. Wolf herself quotes a study from the University of California, San Diego, showing that an average user consumes 34 gigabytes of data per day—the equivalent of nearly 100,000 words. How is that the equivalent of nearly 100,000 words? I appreciate people read a lot o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google China's "century of humiliation". China was the world's biggest economy until the 1870s. Here's just one chart showing it. This is well known to everyone who has studied economic history. http://urbanlogics.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/share-of-gd... You could have asked your question with more humility and less abrasion. Just because you don't know about a topic doesn't mean there isn't reams of research abo…
The questioner asked about sophistication, not size of economy. Chinese technological leadership petered out after the Four Great Inventions ( so around 800AD ) and the economy grew on the back of trade. The Century of Humiliation took place because China was already well behind the technological edge by that time.
This line from the article really caught my attention: > In sum, Wolf says, the paper reading brain has better memory, more imagination, immersion, and patience, and more knowledge than the screen reading brain. I've been torn for years about how to feel about my reading and writing habits. I love reading physical books, especially when I'm trying to develop a deep understanding of some topic, and I have, at times, m…
I don't notice much of a difference with reading, but I do feel the same way about writing; digital todo lists or notes just don't work for me. I used to think this was about the act of writing in itself - that doing it by hand forced me to be more conscious of the information - but writing with e.g. an Apple Pencil on an iPad is just as useless as typing. I'd really like to figure this out because I love the idea of…
> “Behind our screens, at work and at home, we have sutured the temporal segments of our days so as to switch our attention from one task or one source of stimulation to another. We cannot but be changed.”
This part rings true for me.
Last summer I read Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” and then “Digital Minimalism,” in which he gets very into this topic of hypermedia and distracted living. It greatly influenced my thinking about how I use my time, and made me more conscious of the need to focus and actually be present with one activity at a time. This has greatly increased my productivity and lowered my stress level, so I highly recommend it.
Newport argues that a lot of what is “wrong” with today’s computers (in every form factor) is the very thing that makes them so useful: they can do so many things. So unlike a paper book, which is really only for reading, a screen is for displaying all kinds of things, and if we are reading on a screen with notifications turned on then we’re probably reading distracted which means we aren’t reading well.
I read almost exclusively on my iPad or phone. I find it quite comfortable to sit on the couch and read from either device, but I prefer the iPad (mini). When I occasionally still read a paper book I find the experience is really no better or worse than reading on the iPad, except that the iPad has hundreds of books stored in the space and weight of a single magazine.
However, I do think one reason the experience is qualitatively equivalent it is I don’t do a whole lot else on my iPad, so I don’t find it to be a distracting device. I associate it with reading.
Another relevant book on this topic, “Moonwalking with Einstein,” is all about memory. That book essentially makes the case that (educated) people in the pre-internet era had to hold a lot of material in their heads, because you couldn’t google stuff, and so everyone practiced using their memory more, committed more “important,” things to memory, and generally did a better job retaining things they learned.
All of these are interesting, complex side effects of the internet and the ever more ubiquitous computer, and I think there is a lot for us to think about here. On a personal level, we have some opportunity and perhaps obligation to ensure our lives are enriched by these technologies and push back on the negatives that come with them. But just FWIW, I don’t think trying to switch back to only reading on paper is, by itself, the answer :)
This line from the article really caught my attention: > In sum, Wolf says, the paper reading brain has better memory, more imagination, immersion, and patience, and more knowledge than the screen reading brain. I've been torn for years about how to feel about my reading and writing habits. I love reading physical books, especially when I'm trying to develop a deep understanding of some topic, and I have, at times, m…
I don't notice much of a difference with reading, but I do feel the same way about writing; digital todo lists or notes just don't work for me. I used to think this was about the act of writing in itself - that doing it by hand forced me to be more conscious of the information - but writing with e.g. an Apple Pencil on an iPad is just as useless as typing. I'd really like to figure this out because I love the idea of…
>In these later letters, Wolf sounds like the kind of alarmist digital enthusiasts often deride. After all, they say, reading is not dying; it’s thriving. Wolf herself quotes a study from the University of California, San Diego, showing that an average user consumes 34 gigabytes of data per day—the equivalent of nearly 100,000 words. How is that the equivalent of nearly 100,000 words? I appreciate people read a lot o…
I also “lol’d” at 34GB being equated to 100,000 words. A sibling poster suggests it was supposed to be 100k books, but I’m skeptical, it sounds to me like just a false correlation (the author saw somewhere that people read as many as 100k words per day and elsewhere that they consume 34GB of data and mistakenly connected those two dots).