Hate to sound hypercritical, but this article reads like disrespectful clickbait. Don't get me wrong, it has some very insightful thoughts, but poorly and deceptively framed.<p>It starts by telling me that (non-fiction) books are something that I never thought they were in the first place -- a means to linearly and completely copy information from its author, to the page, to my brain, in one pass. (Does anybody actually think this of books? I think not, myself.)<p>It then proceeds to tell me why it's bad at doing that, then gives examples for how lectures are also bad at it, but how lectures combined with textbooks, office hours and better structure can be turned into something much better (all suggesting we're leading towards "how to fix books") only to conclude that books are just fine as long as we don't think of them the way that I never thought of them to begin with.<p>Books are not one thing. Even non-fiction are not one thing. Some books on, say, mathematics or software engineering or even a specific programming language, are written to imbue the author's personality or inject humor, others are intended as a reference, and some freely mix a range of voices throughout.<p>This is how books are, have been, and SHOULD continue to be. Few people pick up a reference book with the expectation that they will read it front-to-back and become an expert in one pass - that isn't its purpose. Similarly, few will pick up a "beginner's guide" book and leave as an expert, but they WILL likely pick up the "beginner's guide" and "reference" books together and be able to use them in conjunction, over time, to learn a topic. Books are searchable and readable non-linearly, and repeatedly, in accordance with the learner's own needs, pacing, and supplementary methods (as the author describes).<p>This is how books work, and they DO work. That a learner needs to find a set of habits across multiple mediums to learn is how <i>learning</i> works, and is not a repudiation against books anymore than it is a repudiation against pencils or pens or paper.<p>Hidden within this article are really great, thought-provoking ideas around learning and how best to do it, but needlessly sacrifices books to do it. This IS a great "how to make learning better" article, that should have been approached as such by its author.