Author talks of text as abstraction compared to "edited" version of reality of visual media. But videos, movies, TV shows are also abstractions, possibly worse in that they more easily trick our subconscious into perceiving them as more real than words on a page while still being constructions of a "reality" based on the creator's point of view. So people think they have an understanding of the world based on fictionalized entertainment and tropes they've experienced thousands of times from screens.<p>Think of any time someone makes a political argument, or comments on a particular aspect of human nature by referencing something they saw in a movie. I think this is odd, at least if over done, as if the constructed media representation is somehow evidence of anything true. As if people don't have to have real lived experience of some phenomena as long as they watched something about it in a show or whatever.<p>Reminds me of Baudrillard's "hyperreality" [0] concept, where constructed media becomes "more real than real", here's an excellent presentation summarizing the idea [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality</a><p>[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/2U9WMftV40c" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/2U9WMftV40c</a>
I've regretted hours spent watching TV, playing computer games, trying to figure out how to complete a task with no information available, being stuck waiting somewhere with nothing to do, but I can't think of a case I've regretted time spent reading. There may be people in the world whose lives would be improved by reading less, but I'm guessing a vanishingly small number.
> What would your grasp of the outside world feel like? Over time, increasingly abstract and dreamlike. Even those with whom you had regular contact would increasingly become simplified, abstracted, flattened characters.<p>I'm going to stop you right there and point out that many people living in the 18th and 19th centuries developed the vast majority of their relationships and understandings of the world through only text in the form of letter writing. And I have found no reason to believe the people of those eras lacked in the intimacies of their relations nor in their understanding of their own world. Certainly not compared to the multimedia deluged generations of the mid to late 20th century.
Books are the original metaverse. Are we spending too much time in worlds in our head and not enough in real life?<p>There was a slum in Varna in the 90s with shacks made of tin and cardboard and most of them had satellite dishes on top. The need to escape physical circumstances and real-world stress is real. The part that's missing is boredom that allows you to create something others wouldn't have created. If you make room for that, despite all the pleasures, you are not leaving the world as a visitor, but as a contributor.
Nice riff on Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death". The focus is
really on the danger of over-reliance on one faculty. But I suppose
the same could be said for an aural-only world of radio and podcasts.
I disagreed that video would be an edited "reality". Image is no more
than the way the world <i>looks</i> as opposed to how it sounds or is
described by text. Ultimately the ability to synthesise these
faculties is what the phrase "common sense" really means. It isn't a
stand-in for "bleedin obvious" or "what most (common) people think",
it is that sense that emerges from an ability to create a world from
sights, sounds, smells, tastes and also written words, so pf course I
do agree that an over-reliance on any one mode of perception leads to
minds that lack common sense.
I think what you read is the key here. Mindless reading of text messages, news headlines and social media posts is very different cognitively than reading actual literature, something like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
The author favors "pictures" and "videos" over the corrupting influence of the written word.<p>Suggesting that we read less and watch more television and YouTube has to be satire.<p>Decrying reading by assaulting readers with a long form essay has to be satire.<p>Asserting that readers have difficulty with over-abstraction, and arguing this point using analogies instead of concrete citations of harm caused, again, has to be satire.<p>Because if it isn't, my god what a shitty and grug-minded article.
I had a friend tell me the other day they're amazed at the number of "important films that everyone has seen" that I haven't seen. I told them, a person who endlessly views TV series and movies that while I enjoy those media, my primary media is written, not video. I can read a book for hours at a time, but unless I'm in a theater, I'm always checking how much longer the thing is going to play, no matter how much I'm enjoying it.<p>Doomscrolling anything...Reddit, Twitter, even HN...can be a waste of time, and of course I've done it many times. But I've never felt I lost anything while reading a book. I'm one of those people who read the back of cereal boxes when I was a kid. Getting drawn into a text-based fictional world may be an abstraction, but I'll take it anytime.
<i>"If there is no Torah study, there is no worldly involvement; if there is no worldly involvement, there is no Torah study. ... If there is no flour, there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour."</i><p>It’s good to walk in the world.
> What would your grasp of the outside world feel like? ... increasingly ... simplified, abstracted, flattened ...<p>More to the contrary. The more you see selected still images and video clips, the more your perception of the world through this becomes shallow, simplistic, garish. It is the written text which delves into complexity, the multitude of facets and nuances, depth.
Please. The author makes no claims on the quality of what is read and suggests that reading a thousand twenty-word tweets is the same as reading a twenty-thousand word novella. Poppycock!<p>The joy of long form text is (when done skillfully) it can take the reader on a journey in which brain chemistry is gradually exercised. Moving through a world of possibilities, it sets your subconscious mind up to refute or reinforce perception.<p>Tweets, LinkedIn posts, Facebook posts... they all give you a hit of dopamine and maybe a jolt of unrealized fear (or maybe a zap of sexy-time lizard-brain fun, depending on what part of twitter you hang out in...) The major social media sites (and many "news" sites) have morphed over to money machines converting human attention to cash by way of ad sales (or investment capital.) Why people feel like they have to subject themselves to that, I don't know. I like my brain chemistry the way it is.<p>Words don't kill people, people kill people (sometimes with words.)
An unmentioned problem with reading too much is that one becomes reactive to text in their thinking and eventually struggles to create new thought. One can become over-reliant on an unending stream of words to push forward the internal train of thought.
Reminds me of this article: <a href="https://bluelabyrinths.com/2021/06/06/an-abstract-oasis-in-the-desert-of-the-real-on-the-relationship-between-map-and-territory/" rel="nofollow">https://bluelabyrinths.com/2021/06/06/an-abstract-oasis-in-t...</a>
We are constantly programmed by our surroundings. By every stimulus we allow to interact with us. Wherever we go. We can't stop it. We can only control it. Sorta.<p>That doesn't mean heavy metal is what made me a devil worshipper. Or that video games are the reason I killed that family of four. Or that having cared lovingly for several small stuffed animals as a child is why I spared their dog on that dread day. And social media will not convince anyone that anything else I've written in this paragraph is remotely true. They're not going to lose themselves in some sick fantasy.<p>Is this the author's stage before or after solipsism? I forget.
Didn’t read 100% of article yet but the premise somewhat brings to mind the book “The Alphabet vs the Goddess”[0] which… definitely criticisms can be made/definitely isn’t the whole story for the events and narrative of history it focuses on, but is really compelling and interesting interweaving of some major historical threads not otherwise easily or often connected<p>[0] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alphabet_Versus_the_Goddess" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alphabet_Versus_the_Godd...</a>
Absurd. Reading and writing is the only reason we’re not stuck in caves. It’s allowed us to create a shared consciousness across time that has been necessary for progress. So the benefits of literacy certainly outweigh any risks.<p>Furthermore, how is oral communication any less of an abstraction? And what about the quality of the text.<p>Also, reading is reflection. We’re not investing words like food.<p>Article poses an interesting question but fails to explore sufficiently.
<i>If an alien landed on Earth today, it might assume that reading and writing are our species’ main function, second only to sleeping and well ahead of eating and reproducing.</i><p>what about:<p>watching tv<p>driving<p>playing video games<p>watching porn<p>watching video online<p>podcasts/audio books
> Every minute, humans send 220 million emails, 70 million WhatsApp and Facebook messages, 16 million texts, 530,000 tweets, and make 6 million Google searches.<p>And the google says: "The average size of an email file is about 75 KB"<p>That's about 15TB of data every minute, about 21,6 PB every day. Only emails. This number is so abstract i dont believe it's real. I would also say that it's not only humans that sends so much messages...
> Think about what it feels like when you put down your phone after a bumper session of doomscrolling through the day’s awful news. It’s the psychological equivalent of stepping off a merry-go-round and expecting the world to keep spinning.<p>I've been wanting to explain this feeling for a while now, and this is so elegantly put.
>> The journalist Nick Bilton has estimated that each day the average Internet user now sees as many as 490,000 words — more than War and Peace.<p>That makes no sense. I need many weeks reading War and Peace but rarely spend more than 24 hours a day reading the internet.