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Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

benwajdi.com

311–320 of 383 posts

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you place games in the "bad" side of things, this hich need to be reduced. I group gaming with reading because the kind of games I play require a level of focus and engagement, and my brain rather spend hours scroll HN and Reddit. It really is an uphill battle.

What kind of games? I’d like to stop playing addictive games and start playing games that are better for my mind.

Text adventures are perfect for that.

Get Winfrotz for Windows or Lectrote under Linux/OSX and download Anchorhead, Spider and Web, Make It Good, Vicious Cycles, All Things Devour, Enemies and Slouch Over Bedlam from IFDB, they should be in Z5 or Z8 format. "Heroines" and "Enemies" are good, too.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#312
post #36

HN represents a wellspring of deeper reading than is generally afforded by the current entertainment cruft portals of the web - reddit, FB, insta, USA today, financial times, etc etc down to the SEO hellholes of recipe sites, youtube product placement; you get the idea. Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. And I don't think I'm alone in al…

I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…

This sounds a lot like my experience as well. Like I'm just waiting for the rest of my life to go away so I can look at my phone. It's terribly unsatisfying, like a diet of only Doritos, but moment to moment that's what I want.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#313

If one wants to read more and willing to try few ideas, here are few that works for me and our family. - Have physical books always around — at your desk, bookshelf, bedside table, etc. My current ratio is roughly 1:4 of physical against Kindle. - Read multiple books at a time. - If you get bored, don’t feel like finishing a book; let it go. May be you can come back to it later. - Always try to carry your Kindle or o…

Reading multiple books at a time has been a big one for me. When I was younger, this concept didn’t even enter my mind… I had one book I was reading right now, and I wouldn’t pick up another until that one was done.

But I feel like having multiple books “in flight” is crucial for comprehending denser topics. I might only be able to get through one chapter a night of a particularly dense book (right now, for me, Understanding Media by McLuhan), but I can still burn through a sci-fi novel or a light biography in a few days at most.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#314

HN represents a wellspring of deeper reading than is generally afforded by the current entertainment cruft portals of the web - reddit, FB, insta, USA today, financial times, etc etc down to the SEO hellholes of recipe sites, youtube product placement; you get the idea. Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. And I don't think I'm alone in al…

Okay I do like HN—I'm here for a reason after all—but it is flawed like any other curation. For one, I find that it veers extremely literal and nerdy. For some topics such as programming and math, this is wonderful, as programming and math are both topics where literalism and nerdiness are required. But in some cases this blend is not great. I wouldn't put HN as a great place to get your knowledge of more social, cul…

Do you have any examples of places someone could go to find more "social, cultural content"?

I don't think my info diet is very balanced. I'd love to be introduced to other places where people talk about different things

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience matches those of others in this thread. I barely read anymore and find it difficul to focus. Largely, my tastes have calcified and narrowed quite a lot. I used to be an adventurous reader and always tried random books I saw on the library shelves, but these days I find it difficult to get into something new, and if I do read a book I've probably read it before. I think if I just start reading it'll come…

One thing that seems to have helped some of my friends who have experienced the same issue of not wanting to read anymore is to find one particular book or style they liked before and go deep into that author's backlog or similar styles. And to add to that, don't be afraid of reading pulpy fiction; you're not trying to impress anybody with what you're reading, you're doing it for yourself. Enjoy it. Read young adult…

I strongly recommend this approach, it's exactly how I got myself back into reading. I started back by just picking up a super light read, then some fun novels from a couple authors I liked from back when I used to read a lot, and now I'm starting to branch out more again.

Like so many others in this thread I had completely stopped reading in favor of quick bites on the internet. One thing I've been surprised to notice with reading again is how deep the experience can be compared to an online article, even for a pretty light book.

So yeah, for anyone who misses books but is having trouble getting back to them, try picking up the first thing that looks fun, even of it's silly or easy compared to your favorite books in the past.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#316
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of games? I’d like to stop playing addictive games and start playing games that are better for my mind.

Outer Wilds, Return of the Obra Dinn, for investigations and memory and "human puzzles". Manifold Garden, Opus Magnum (+ other Zachtronics game) for puzzle solving.

Outer Wilds became one of my all-time favorites. It feels so lovingly crafted in a way that so few games do now.

For a completely integrated puzzle solving Zen experience, The Witness is also excellent.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#317
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't scrutinized video games enough after the "video games cause violence" myth was debunked. Hands down the biggest addiction among my friends in their late 20s and early 30s. The problem is that none of them see it that way. They take breaks from "known" addictions (alcohol, cannabis) repeatedly, only to still fail to reach their goals, without ever acknowledging the gaming issue.

What kind of goals is it preventing them from reaching?

Well I don't know what he was referring to, but at some point while I was at university I became totally addicted to the game "Football Manager". I would stay up entire nights playing that game. I had to completely quit playing it or I would have flunked out.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> predominantly white and Asian and male, indeed predominantly cis-hetereosexual male What I appreciate about HN is that we don‘t make everything about race, gender, and politics, for no reason.

I'm not a huge fan of the "make it about race/gender/politics" rhetoric, and frankly this demonstrates the issues I mentioned in the post. The entire framing of "making XYZ about race/gender/politics" implies that XYZ was not about race/gender/politics and that the addition was simply unnecessary. However these issue of race/gender/politics permeate our society and do have an effect on a lot of issues. If I'm being h…

I'm not sure where parent argued that we should not be concerned about police brutality, hate crimes, or the ongoing fraying of the social fabric which gets commonly internalized as a sense that "society is not validating my existence". Framing those issues are purely matters of race/gender/factional politics is just as harmful.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#319

An aside, I find it a bit interesting that at some point we stopped talking about internet and game addiction. It used to be a hot topic, but I guess now that we are all completely addicted after decade of intense behavioral experimentation, none of us are interested in reading about it anymore.

It seems to be a recurring thing with new technologies. Something new arrives and some people instantly see how it can ruin some aspects of our lives and warn about it. It gets taken semi-seriously, but in the end not seriously enough and the thing that those people warned us about ends up happening. After the fact no-one cares, because the new normal is now the thing that used to be unthinkably horrible before.

I remember someone here on HN once commented something about how the Amish instead of just categorically opposing all new technologies decide collectively which technologies to use and take into consideration how the technology might affect their culture and communities and this has lead them to reject things like the television and cars. I can't find any more realiable sources on this, but it sure seems like a much better way to build the society than ours is.

The "free" Western cultures are increasingly vulnerable to hacking of either human psychology or collective customs and laws. It's like a code base where every new commit automatically gets accepted and only occasionally some commits get reverted because someone managed to prove without doubt that it was a bad idea. To continue the metaphor, this sort of project management might make sense when the code base (or the civilization) is new and the focus is on just getting something running as quickly as possible, but makes the code base (or the cultural heritage of a society) bloated, unmanageable and vulnerable to attacks over longer time periods.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#320

Internet is the new boogeyman. TV used to be it. Radio was it one time. Hell, _novels_ were treated this way. The one thing they all have in common is being new behavior patterns that people can worry and kvetch about.

And to some extent, all of the nightmare scenarios from those technologies happened. Over time, those scenarios just became the new normal way of life and we adapted to it. Of course, many have made the case that a lot of our psychological and societal problems have their roots in those technologies just as their opponents originally thought they would have, but, again, this is the new norm now so people mostly don't think about it.
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