Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What's happening to reading?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 334 posts

Re: What's happening to reading?

#271

Post by dayvid »

asimpletune wrote: post #95

Summarizers start with the default assumption that reading is an obstacle standing between the reader and some kind of reward. Even the idea that knowledge is something that is capable of being transferred is something that has to be assumed at one’s peril. On the other it's those of us who’ve read in the old school style, for fun, in private that are more convinced of the opposite than anyone. If anything getting su…

A lot of modern business books are guilty of word stuffing, like webpages trying to hit 500 words to get SEO ranked. Dense works and older books tend to have a better reading journey.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#272

Post by karaterobot »

> In our current reading regime, summarized or altered texts are the exception, not the rule. But over the next decade or so, that polarity may well reverse

Most people don't read many books as it is. That's sad, but it's true for a couple decades. Those people will continue not reading.

Of the remainder, some people will continue to read books because reading books is enjoyable. It's not a chore, it's fun, so there is no reason to try to automate it away.

Another portion of people who read books only read them to get through them. Usually that's either because they want to understand some idea in them, or sometimes just so they can say they've read the book. These are the people who will use AI to summarize books rather than reading them line-by-line. I have zero problems with that, personally. That's not existentially troubling to me at all.

Nah, not too worried. Not about this anyway.

The thing that worries me about the future of literature is customization. I think having a shared monoculture—even a canon—is a good thing that we should strive for. We need it, to be part of the same community. The day that AI can easily just spin out a book that's exactly what you ask for, there won't be any reason for any two people to read the same books, let alone the same twenty million people. That will just accelerate the cultural fragmentation and attended alienation our culture has been living through for a while.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#273

Post by lubujackson »

xandrius wrote: post #252
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative summary of Roses Are Red: Love, simplicity, beauty, ambiguity, tradition. There are different ways of summarizing a text. Odyssey (another poem) could be summarized bluntly: Homer's The Odyssey follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, on his perilous journey home after the Trojan War. For ten years, he faces trials, including the Cyclops Polyphemus, the witch Circe, and the deadly Sirens, while angering the sea…

Present both and you'd have a pretty decent summary of the Odyssey.

And yet, the long form exists. Because reading (or in the case of the Odyssey, narrating/speaking the story) is experiential. Just as you can summarize a movie, the plot is very little of the point of WHY you would watch something. It might help you discuss elements of it, or determine if it sounds remotely interesting to you, but we experience art because it is, despite appearances, a succinct way of transmitting complex ideas and experiences.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#274

Post by socalgal2 »

asimpletune wrote: post #95

Summarizers start with the default assumption that reading is an obstacle standing between the reader and some kind of reward. Even the idea that knowledge is something that is capable of being transferred is something that has to be assumed at one’s peril. On the other it's those of us who’ve read in the old school style, for fun, in private that are more convinced of the opposite than anyone. If anything getting su…

Doesn't it really depend on what we're reading? I generally wouldn't want to skip any words in a fiction novel. I would love to skip words in most self-help books that turn out to be 3 paragraphs of "the point" and 100-200 pages of fluff to get the book on the shelf. Another perfect example is nearly any online recipe with 25 screens of fluff at the top to get to the 1 screen recipe.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#275

Post by gkanai »

smeej wrote: post #145

I'm not sure what's happening, but I am sure it isn't new. I had to learn the hard way 15 years ago that the average American adult cannot parse a full-page email in standard English. It seemed crazy to me at the time and seems crazy to me now, given that the average adult has completed elementary school, but most people are barely functionally literate at all. I don't expect you to believe me. It's a weird claim. Bu…

Every day one step closer to the reality of Wall-e https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E

Re: What's happening to reading?

#276

Post by socalgal2 »

DrammBA wrote: post #253
jraph wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you. Many people are so aware they can't that they will refuse to try. Of the ones that do, you will struggle to find one who can read the text with anything like the fluidity or inflection they would use to speak the same words Of course. I would likely find this situation very unsettling, if not stressful…

Do schools not ask kids to read out loud in class anymore? Any one of my classmates could read a page out loud fluently even if you stopped them randomly at the grocery store, and most of us are not even 30 yet.

For whatever reason I could never do that. We did it in school and something about the pressure made it impossible for me to read things smoothly even though, reading in my mind to myself things felt smooth. It's the same with typing. I suddenly can't type if someone standing over my shoulder watching me. It makes no sense. It could be my best friend but it doesn't matter. Suddently I can't type well.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#277

Post by BobaFloutist »

rpdillon wrote: post #187
whycome wrote: post #184

> These readers might start a book on an e-reader and then continue it on the go, via audio narration Has this been solved? In a low friction way with good UX. I’m surprised that with Amazon owning Audible there’s not a more streamlined option to switch between an ebook and the audio version.

This has been a thing for years. I've used it dozens of times. https://www.audible.com/ep/wfs

Wow, that's crazy!

Re: What's happening to reading?

#278

Post by BobaFloutist »

jcranmer wrote: post #42
datadrivenangel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's moderately dense literature, as muddy and gloomy as the portrayal of london, but I would expect the majority of people to be able to read this?

I suspect a majority of the population has no idea what "Michaelmas term" is. And there's some other phrases in there that require some familiarity with things commonplace in the 19th century that aren't so in the 21st century.

Sure, but I know what terms are in tis context, and I know what Christmas is. So it's hardly impossible to deduce enough to keep reading.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#279

Post by pixelmonkey »

I wrote a little on this topic in "Putting Your Media on a Diet":

https://amontalenti.com/2024/01/31/media-diet

Written in Jan 2024. I sensed that the world had already moved on from reading as a core source of information and awareness of the world.

But in that essay, I tried to make the case that this is a mistake -- that the environment has never been better for deep readers, that the internet and the various sources of cheap/free long-form text can be a deep reading utopia, if properly curated.

But that's the issue. Most people click into the default. They don't curate. They don't monitor their media diet. And so they are drawn, like moths to a flame, to short-form video (especially), as well as other passive information sources that resemble TV and talk radio from prior eras.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#280

Post by [deleted] »

andelink wrote: post #267
conductr wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If someone sends me a full page email, I immediately skip it. No time for that. They'll follow up more concisely when it becomes important. Or if it requires such elaborate description, a phone call or meeting would have probably been a better channel for this communication. Likewise, anytime I start typing an email and it gets lengthy I know I'd be better off picking up the phone/scheduling a call.

I’m sorry, but you can’t find five minutes (if even) to read an email? No way your day-to-day life is so completely composed of things demanding your full attention that you don’t have a couple minutes to read an email. You typed out this comment, presumably after reading the thread. Surely you have time if someone you know sent you an email. You could read it in the time it takes to brush your teeth.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN