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Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

theparisreview.org

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Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#101

Post by kashyapc »

everythingswan wrote: post #10

I've come to love books intensely. Not only because I enjoy learning--before I read books, I found blogs to be great educators. I love books because they create time and space to be alone with a thought. It gives me time to consider things that I normally have no space for. I remember Seth Godin saying once that every business book can be summarized in just a few pages but the book itself is a story. I think it goes…

The great Roman emporer, Marcus Aurelius, says the following in the beginning of his book, Meditations:

To read attentively—not to be satisfied with “just getting the gist of it.”

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#102

Post by Y_Y »

int_19h wrote: post #35
marvindanig wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it means the same thing: skimming vs. soaking in with "duration state" in between. Unless one set of labels appear more valuable to you than the other…

This is completely orthogonal to scrolling vs pages, however.

Horizontal is typically orthogonal to vertical.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#103

Post by saidj »

everythingswan wrote: post #10

I've come to love books intensely. Not only because I enjoy learning--before I read books, I found blogs to be great educators. I love books because they create time and space to be alone with a thought. It gives me time to consider things that I normally have no space for. I remember Seth Godin saying once that every business book can be summarized in just a few pages but the book itself is a story. I think it goes…

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Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#104

Post by vinceguidry »

everythingswan wrote: post #10

I've come to love books intensely. Not only because I enjoy learning--before I read books, I found blogs to be great educators. I love books because they create time and space to be alone with a thought. It gives me time to consider things that I normally have no space for. I remember Seth Godin saying once that every business book can be summarized in just a few pages but the book itself is a story. I think it goes…

What I want out of books is to be able to work them into a sequential feed workflow. I don't think it's likely to happen without hacks in my lifetime due to DRM.

But it would be great to get chapters of books woven in between long and short form textual content whose sources are personally curated. If someone thinks they can either work out a deal with Amazon or otherwise get around the DRM issue in a commercial product, drop me a line, I'd love to build V1.

Think about it, all text content, sliced and diced for maximum consumability. It just might make feed readers sexy again.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#105

Post by nestorD »

tgarv wrote: post #17
nothrows wrote: post #16

I recently discovered I score very low on VVIQ. Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. I don't have full on Aphantasia. But listening to how for other people reading a book is like watching a movie in their heads blows my mind. Being able to imagine with any level of depth sounds pretty amazing. As a kid I never really played pretend or was into fiction. But I'm curious that possibly long form reading is on the d…

Oh wow, I didn't know that was a thing but that describes me perfectly. I can sort of picture faces to some extent, but trying to visualize a house or a scene is almost impossible to me. I find it frustrating when trying to think of a "memory palace" because I can't even think about what the front door of the palace would look like, let along intricate places for things within it.

A trick with the memory palace is to use place you know well such as your bedroom. Then, with practice, you will learn how to build image that are vivid to your mind and easier to remember (it is perfectly normal if at first you build images that are not easily retained, you will learn from the image you do retain).

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#106

Post by arethuza »

gdubs wrote: post #11

My wife and I recently embarked on the 'Great Books' list from "How to read a Book" [1]. It's a nice contrast to the more scattershot reading that happens online. If you're interested in how technology might cause self-interruptions that make things like sitting down with a book more difficult, I recommend checking out "The Distracted Mind". [2] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book 2: http://mitpress.m…

I read "The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life" a while back and that led to "The Master and Margarita" which is now one of my favourite books :-)

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#107

Post by Emma_Goldman »

vinceguidry wrote: post #104
everythingswan wrote: post #10

I've come to love books intensely. Not only because I enjoy learning--before I read books, I found blogs to be great educators. I love books because they create time and space to be alone with a thought. It gives me time to consider things that I normally have no space for. I remember Seth Godin saying once that every business book can be summarized in just a few pages but the book itself is a story. I think it goes…

What I want out of books is to be able to work them into a sequential feed workflow. I don't think it's likely to happen without hacks in my lifetime due to DRM. But it would be great to get chapters of books woven in between long and short form textual content whose sources are personally curated. If someone thinks they can either work out a deal with Amazon or otherwise get around the DRM issue in a commercial prod…

I have no idea what anything you wrote means. Can you explain in everyday language, assuming I'm your grandma?

Why do you want to slice chapters from separate books together and insert 'textual content' inbetween them?

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#108

Post by arethuza »

lbacaj wrote: post #42
chiefalchemist wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's great. That said, I've tried audio (books) and it's just not the same as reading (print). Reading, to me, seems to engage the mind in a deeper way. It is, nearly by its nature, more proactive and participatory. On the other hand, watching and listening is far more passive. You don't work to consume, you just wait for it to come to you. For example, when you read you can pause, re-read, etc. On the othe…

I completely get this. Between family, my full time job, side projects.. I had no choice but to listen to some of these books as Audio books.. I ended up pretty much listening to 25+ audio books this year.. the only way to make the content stick is to: 1) take a ton of notes 2) do exactly as you say, rewind over and over until you can mark it down. These are the next few features I want to add to this thing, taking n…

I probably listen to ~40 audio books a year and I'd love something that allowed me to review the text of what I had just listened to and re-read and highlight specific parts.

Also something that displays diagrams/maps sensibly would be good too!

Edit: And by "love" I mean "pay" - I'd happily pay the same amount as my Audible subscription for a service that helped with this.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#109

Post by LandR »

CharlesMerriam2 wrote: post #75

As I read this story, some moving advertisements start along the top and sides. After ten seconds, a floating bar covers the text. After a few more, a modal dialog. Then the 'share me now' buttons, obscuring the text. Then I leave. Too few websites offer an experience for someone to read the content, and so we will see "Reading Online Content in the Age of Constant Distraction" in HackerNews.

Firefox reader mode kills all of this.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#110

Post by andrelaszlo »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #67

This article resonates a lot with me. I have always found great pleasure in reading but lately my computer and phone steals all attention and I genuinely feel less smart because of it. It's a big reason why we're launching https://mypapermag.com/ It's an app (web only for now: vue/django) where you select great long reads selected from our partners, but the important thing is that you actually get them in print in yo…

I forgot to add that if you're interested in how our reading is changing, Maryanne Wolf's research is great. Her book 'Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World' gives a great overview of a diverse way of looking at reading. (I haven't read 'Proust and the Squid' yet, by the same author, but I think it touches on similar topics)

According to Wolf, our "reading circuits" are changing on a neurological level, affecting reasoning, critical thinking and even empathy.

On the other hand were getting better at skim reading, quickly sorting through mountains of lower value information.

This article in the Guardian gives a great summary: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-r...

Another good article on the topic, if you happen to prefer French, from Usbec & Rica: https://m.usbeketrica.com/article/a-plus-vous-lisez-en-diago...

(Disclaimer: Both The Guardian and Usbek & Rica are supplying articles for our platform)

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