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In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

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Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#251

Post by jaco6 »

sourcepluck wrote: post #246

Someone mentions Postman below so I'm tempted to add: can the tech crowd try a bit of Neil Postman, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord and the Situationists, Mark Fisher, Marhsall McLuhan, presumably loads of others I don't know about who have done work in these areas, and then maybe Michel Desmurget on the more science-based side of it if they want to avoid any airy-fairy theory. It's arguably especially wild that Desmurg…

Tech employees don’t engage constructively with tech criticism because of self interest.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#252

Post by netbioserror »

The content committed to print needs to be worth it. I'm a fan of old-school sci-fi, the kind that asks how technology might enhance or undermine the human experience and how that might change, collapse, or raise society to new heights. Right now, the entire genre is in trough of unimaginative, vacuous current-day allegory. Most published work is entirely wrapped up in gender, sex, race, and labor politics. Everything is a stand-in for current political movements and figures, where the setting may as well be set-dressing. No curiosity, no prescience, no fundamental philosophical questioning.

My only reprieve is that sci-fi short story omnibuses contain maybe 20-30% true sci-fi that's exactly what I'm searching for. But buying a print novel off the shelf got to the point where it was wasting my money. And I can only re-read the classics so much.

Waiting for the "sci-fi was always current-day allegory!" sophomorists to flood the comments.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#253

Post by akkartik »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #223

The title and apparent argument of this confound me somewhat. For those of us who read many, many books very frequently, but stick mostly to digital versions simply out of space and access convenience, it's not hard to feel as if we're somehow being looked down upon because we're not hauling around a bundle of weighty tomes.. Why should print be so specifically necessary if a book's content is what defines it? That I…

Yeah, I had to look closely as well to figure out what this was saying. The core reasoning seems to be this one sentence: "Printed books are a zone of resistance against the neon god of the algorithm since tinkering with code can’t delete their contents, as hackers recently did with the Internet Archive."

But you don't have to retreat from software entirely. You can read offline to keep someone over the network from tampering with contents. You can advocate for and obtain DRM-free experiences so tampering is easier to spot. You can make many copies of the bits for yourself, leaning into one of software's great strengths. So I think there are many ways to resist the "neon god" here. But we do each of us have to think for ourselves about the consequences of our choices.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#255

Post by rexpop »

netbioserror wrote: post #252

The content committed to print needs to be worth it. I'm a fan of old-school sci-fi, the kind that asks how technology might enhance or undermine the human experience and how that might change, collapse, or raise society to new heights. Right now, the entire genre is in trough of unimaginative, vacuous current-day allegory. Most published work is entirely wrapped up in gender, sex, race, and labor politics. Everythin…

Sci-fi was always a current-day allegory. That's why I prefer cyberpunk: rather than allegorical, it tries to be literal and concrete.

But cyberpunk is not imaginative in the way you're looking for. I can appreciate that.

What are some examples of the old-school, non-allegorical stuff? Maybe Exhalation?

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#256

Post by dlkf »

sourcepluck wrote: post #246

Someone mentions Postman below so I'm tempted to add: can the tech crowd try a bit of Neil Postman, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord and the Situationists, Mark Fisher, Marhsall McLuhan, presumably loads of others I don't know about who have done work in these areas, and then maybe Michel Desmurget on the more science-based side of it if they want to avoid any airy-fairy theory. It's arguably especially wild that Desmurg…

I implore everyone reading this to google the Sokal hoax before decide whether these guys are worthwhile.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#257

Post by dlkf »

There is no epistemological collapse. Access to accurate information has never been so fast nor so easy. To be sure, lies are spread on the internet - but people believed all sorts of bullshit before the internet. Those who want to claim there is a crisis don’t have a principled argument as to how things are worse.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#258

Post by djbusby »

dlkf wrote: post #257

There is no epistemological collapse. Access to accurate information has never been so fast nor so easy. To be sure, lies are spread on the internet - but people believed all sorts of bullshit before the internet. Those who want to claim there is a crisis don’t have a principled argument as to how things are worse.

I frequently hear there are more lies and they spread even faster in 2024 than 2014 and for sure faster than 1994.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#260

Post by bccdee »

Spivak wrote: post #237
wayoverthecloud wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading a book is not really passive. Especially if it's a good book. You have to constantly imagine the layouts and the connections the book is trying to draw. For me, after years of Internet, getting back to books made me appreciate my younger self because books need active imagination and follow-through in the brain. I was able to do that effortlessly when I was a child. In fact, if you read all the HN comments th…

This happens with all forms of art, it's not unique to the written word. With movies and TV you're imagining the world outside the frame borders. With paintings you're imagining the whole scene or story depending on the piece. So there's a point here that TikTok is competing for leisure time that in its absence has a better chance of being imaginative but I think that undersells the creativity of social media to a de…

I think that's the key thing. Social media bombards us with stimuli based on an algorithm optimizing for what will grab our attention best. It doesn't matter if it has value, or even if it can hold our attention, because there's always some new novelty in the pipeline.

Long-form writing ask us to choose a subject and then focus deeply and deliberately on it. It's more demanding and more rewarding.

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