[deleted]
Why can’t we read anymore?
21–30 of 198 posts
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#22I've read over 500 fiction books and 2000+ non-fiction. I've read many of the big thick classics like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Infinite Jest. I've kept a spreadsheet of all the books I've read somewhat like Art Garfunkel[1] (of Simon & Garfunkel music duo). I've also read Nick Carr's "The Shallows"[2] and other authors about about the web's effect on attention span, distractions, etc. With all that said, I'm not convi…
"15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos?"
That's a real problem. You can't write and sell a book for a fast-changing language. (Go may have stabilized enough for a printed book. A useful Rust book is impossible right now.) A writer and publisher can't invest the time and effort to produce a book that will be obsolete when it ships.
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#23Reading takes all of your attention, all of it. I can't have a conversation while reading a book, I can't watch a movie while reading a book, you have to be ready to give everything to that book for whatever period of time you want to read it for. I am watching Chopped, skimming articles like this one, I just stepped up mid-typing that last bit to help my wife with something and finally I'm programming. I was interru…
I think the point is that attention is a luxury.
These days, the currency is attention. The amount of attention required for reading of any substance is very high, and with thousands of apps, sites, shows, brands, and everything else pulling at us in a way that's engineered to be ideally visceral and tailored to our animal impulses, the lack of attention left over is no surprise.
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#24I don't have a problem reading when it is properly paginated like a book or ebook. But when i read a online article it becomes something else because it is just a very long scroll of text. Perhaps the one thing the web really need is a pagination API...
I prefer a long scroll of text. Less distraction. Books are paginated arbitrarily, and it's quite a large aspect of the experience to be left up to random chance.
I agree. Having a scrollbar as a percentage completion indicator is a very nice thing. I can also highlight the text on the page where I was at in the likely event I get distracted and have to move on to something else. At this point, I do this out of habit on any article longer than a few paragraphs.
Side note, if your site pops up a stupid SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER when someone highlights text, I most likely won't read your articles. I didn't read this one because Medium does this; SBNation articles do this, too and my browser now loads custom Javascript on their pages to remove it. It's distracting and serves no real purpose, except to take me out of my flow of reading.
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#25This is an amazing article, if you get to the heart of it (though be warned, that requires actually reading it).
One of the amazing insights: new information is a drug. It causes a dopamine rush. The influx of all this new information, alerts, everything tugging at us every day is the new legal high, and we're all addicted, with thousands of external entities profiting off the act, dealing out notifications.
I highly recommend reading it fully!
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#26I've read over 500 fiction books and 2000+ non-fiction. I've read many of the big thick classics like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Infinite Jest. I've kept a spreadsheet of all the books I've read somewhat like Art Garfunkel[1] (of Simon & Garfunkel music duo). I've also read Nick Carr's "The Shallows"[2] and other authors about about the web's effect on attention span, distractions, etc. With all that said, I'm not convi…
Whenever I real long-form books, my mind will occasionally wander into other areas, while my eyes keep reading on. I'll have to continually go back and re-read what I feel like I've just read. This isn't just an internet-fueled lack of attention, it's how I've always read, and how I image most people read most of the time.
The difference is with a website, you can go investigate your immediate thoughts rather than committing to the re-read. It is lazier, maybe. It's probably not great if you want to learn something in depth and stay focused on it for long periods of time.
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#27I'm honestly a little surprised at some of the comments here. I thought most people on here would agree that many of us do suffer from this. I mean, how many of you actually read through the entire article, WITHOUT checking your email, or flipping to twitter/fb to tell the world about this good article you just found? I had to really force myself to read the entire article first, and not give in to that urge to get a…
> how many of you actually read through the entire article, WITHOUT checking your email, or flipping to twitter/fb to tell the world about this good article you just found?
Err, I don't know, but I was very surprised by reading all the comments (and original blogpost) implying you can't handle reading a 3000ish signs post without any interruption.
Of course, I see that we are "jumping" frequently, like every ten minutes or so, to find "brain fresh-air"; but if you have that much trouble to focus on a so simple thing like reading a simple article, maybe there is something more serious that you have to check without waiting.
(…honestly, I don't know how you can work in any environment with such an extreme rythm of "brain jumping".)
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#28I've read over 500 fiction books and 2000+ non-fiction. I've read many of the big thick classics like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Infinite Jest. I've kept a spreadsheet of all the books I've read somewhat like Art Garfunkel[1] (of Simon & Garfunkel music duo). I've also read Nick Carr's "The Shallows"[2] and other authors about about the web's effect on attention span, distractions, etc. With all that said, I'm not convi…
"15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos?" That's a real problem. You can't write and sell a book for a fast-changing language. (Go may have stabilized enough for a printed book. A useful Rust book is impossible right now.) A writer and publisher can't invest the time and effort to produce…
[deleted]
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#29tl;dr
Re: Why can’t we read anymore?
#30I read a lot. I just happen to do most of my reading online. I don't follow the notion that what we read online by default has less value than what is available to us in books. I have learned a lot from what I've read online, whether it's long form articles, Wikipedia articles, piecemeal submissions that make up online forum/community sites or even IRC logs. The mere fact that something is available in book form is n…
I don't think the author is arguing that that books are more accurate or more credible than other forms of writing. What the author is arguing is that books provide a different sort of experience than those other forms of writing.