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Our Bookless Future

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Re: Our Bookless Future

#91

Post by ghaff »

jrockway wrote: post #90
ghaff wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be overestimating the ease with which people can make videos, post them to YouTube, and have the money roll in. The relatively few who are really successful mostly had to/have to work pretty hard to create and promote their content. And there's still a huge luck of the draw ("lots of great channels with 3 subscribers and 10 views"). As for books, it really depends on what your goals are. No, you're ve…

Not overestimating the ease at which one can "make it", but the infrastructure exists to make it. That is lacking for other forms of media, which is why people aren't doing them anymore.

I guess I'm not seeing the distinction. People do have nice little side businesses built around blogs, which are pretty easy to set up. (I'd never go the Medium route; I've published there but only as a copy from elsewhere.) And anyone can publish a book on Amazon even if they can't/don't want to go through a traditional publisher.

I just don't see recommendation engines/other infrastructure on YouTube as offering any particularly unique discovery and monetization mechanism vs. other media. If anything, it seems you're more dependent on the whims of Google than in the case of, say, an independent blog.

Re: Our Bookless Future

#92

Post by malloryerik »

baxtr wrote: post #29
culturestate wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Same here. I’m so much more productive whenever I write down my todos on a simple sheet of paper. I have a very elaborated online todo list. But still, paper works more effectively. I have no clue why and it frustrates me

When you write a note on paper you've made a unique physical object and maybe that fits better into our memories somehow, for example by inhabiting a space that we can recall?

Whereas digital data appears to break the mental physical space rule that a thing exists in a certain place? As for notes on a phone or computer, they've disappeared into another dimension and are harder to think of as being "at hand." We can't really use our spatial memory on digital stuff, I'm guessing.

A Kindle might be better since your current page in your current book opens as soon as you wake it up, more like a physical object and less like something that disappears into and reappears out of a magician's bag.

I find with my Kindle and ebooks in general that I'd really like some minimal but ever-present indication of my place in the book, even a single pixel progress bar, maybe in part because I yearn for some kind of spatial-object relationship with the book.

With pen and paper notes I've got a 3d object that I've altered. Maybe it feels more present in the same way that cash on a table feels more like "real money" than the credit card next to it.

Re: Our Bookless Future

#93

Post by smegger001 »

dingaling wrote: post #23
freddie_mercury wrote: post #12

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.

i have heard arguments that porcelain is to blame. Because their porcelain solved many problems that the west used glass for so they never developed much glass and thus were unable to progress on to making lenses or labware so no glasses, telescopes, or microscopes, also no prisms or high quality mirrors. Without these advances you are unable to study much of biology, chemistry, astronomy, optics and medicine.

Re: Our Bookless Future

#94

Post by JadeNB »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #41

This is really missing the point, IMO. The difference between paper print vs digital "print" is not the issue. The problem is more that TV, movies, social media and YT have created a post-literate culture where the primary model of communication is visual and emotional, not textual and abstracted. That culture is extroverted rather than introverted, geared towards triggering simplistic emotional responses rather than…

> The problem is more that TV, movies, social media and YT have created a post-literate culture where the primary model of communication is visual and emotional, not textual and abstracted.

This seems equally well a description of a pre-literate culture, so there doesn't seem to be any reason that the pendulum couldn't swing again.

Re: Our Bookless Future

#96

Post by romwell »

jhbadger wrote: post #65
romwell wrote: post #55

Eh, cry me a river. To put things in contrast: the Russian Empire, home of many great writers, such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Checkhov just to name a few, had a literacy rate of about 24% overall; and at that, less than 13% of women were literate[1]. The truth is, reading has never really been the pastime of the masses, save, possibly, for a brief period in the 20th century. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbe…

Russia was literally still a medieval feudal society in much of the 19th century, so not really representative of civilization at the time. 19th century Britain was home to the "penny dreadful" (cheap books often with a horror or romance angle designed to attract the working class reader) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful

My point is that literature will be just fine without the participation of the 90%.

Penny Dreadful existed because Netflix wasn't there. So it will be gone - again, is this a huge loss to the civilization? I don't think there's a sadness that people aren't reading more literature of the Penny Dreadful kind.

And as I said, it's not a slippery slope: you don't need the 90% for great literature to exist.

Most people will read fewer books. And it's fine.

Re: Our Bookless Future

#97

Post by romwell »

keiferski wrote: post #79
romwell wrote: post #55

Eh, cry me a river. To put things in contrast: the Russian Empire, home of many great writers, such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Checkhov just to name a few, had a literacy rate of about 24% overall; and at that, less than 13% of women were literate[1]. The truth is, reading has never really been the pastime of the masses, save, possibly, for a brief period in the 20th century. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbe…

> The truth is, reading has never really been the pastime of the masses, save, possibly, for a brief period in the 20th century. Nor has widespread participation in the political process, yet the benefits of democratic society seem worth preserving/enlarging.

If your argument is that new things are worth keeping, then it applies just as well to reading blogs instead of books. Or watching TV, which seems to be going away. Should we fight for the preservation of the TV culture?

My point was that great literature doesn't need involvement of the masses (unlike democracy).

Re: Our Bookless Future

#98

Post by romwell »

AQuantized wrote: post #57
romwell wrote: post #55

Eh, cry me a river. To put things in contrast: the Russian Empire, home of many great writers, such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Checkhov just to name a few, had a literacy rate of about 24% overall; and at that, less than 13% of women were literate[1]. The truth is, reading has never really been the pastime of the masses, save, possibly, for a brief period in the 20th century. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbe…

Famines and disease were also much more common prior to the late 20th century. If our progress regressed it would still be cause for concern, even if the status quo hasn't lasted so long.

My point was that great works don't need everyone to be a reader to exist.

If we go back to 20% literacy, we still have to likes of Tolstoy.

Arguably famine and disease are bad for those who experience them. Replacing reading books with blogs, games, and video? Not quite so clear.

I argue that nothing is lost at all. The bookworms (to which, I hope, I belong) shouldn't be said if 90% don't participate in their favorite hobby.

Re: Our Bookless Future

#99

Post by romwell »

andrepd wrote: post #72
romwell wrote: post #55

Eh, cry me a river. To put things in contrast: the Russian Empire, home of many great writers, such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Checkhov just to name a few, had a literacy rate of about 24% overall; and at that, less than 13% of women were literate[1]. The truth is, reading has never really been the pastime of the masses, save, possibly, for a brief period in the 20th century. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbe…

> Eh, cry me a river. Such substance. > To put things in contrast: the Russian Empire, home of many great writers, such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Checkhov just to name a few, had a literacy rate of about 24% overall Like another poster commented, Russia had serfdom until well into the 19th century. Look at central and western Europe, if you want to see a literate society in that time. Also, what is your point with…

My point was that great literature doesn't need the involvement of 90% of the population to exist.

If 90% of the people stop reading books "deeply" (and that's assuming they ever did), we still get to have Tolstoys of our day for the people who want to spend their time that way. This is no loss for humanity.

You picked "reading books" as your metric of progress, but that choice needs to be justified. If, instead, you picked "watching programmed television", you could be similarly concerned as more people are cutting cable, but fewer people would take this argument seriously.

Re: Our Bookless Future

#100

Post by stevewillows »

tjpnz wrote: post #56
dwaltrip wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The single-purposeness and simplicity of non-digital tools is important, I think. Paper doesn't have a web browser hovering behind that icon, waiting to be easily clicked at any moment. Our brain knows that infinite oceans of content and stimuli are lurking there.

As someone with ADHD I can absolutely identify with that. I've tried ebooks in the past but due to distractions tend to come away with very little comprehension of what I've just read. Dead tree books are a lifesaver, I'm able to completely unplug and can consume multiple chapters in a single sitting.

It'd be worth trying out a proper ereader. I picked up a Kobo Libra so I could get back into reading and away from audiobooks a bit. I've read studies that the brain can't tell between the two, but I was halfway through an audiobook recently and realized I had no clue what was going on.

I bought this as my summer project -- basically, 'Steve, let's retrain your brain to focus on long form reading again.'

What I like about an ereader / eink is that its not some flashy screen with a bunch of stuff going on in the background like an iPad or whatever. The screens look great and have an amazing refresh rate these days.

The Libra is a 7" screen, which I figured should be good enough to read PDF'd magazines in landscape -- and I was right [1]! This uses KOReader [2]. While the images themselves aren't the same as a color magazine/screen, it's good enough. For epubs everything is exactly as you'd expect.

With my own ADHD, the initial get-down-to-reading is tough, but I've noticed that it is getting easier with each session. And it is also getting to the point where I am looking forward to reading.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/9hncMyI.jpg

[2] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=295612

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