7 ms·

Online content is often low-quality, highly commercial in nature and very ephemeral. Books, the real kind, when they are good can stay with you for a very long

Online content is often low-quality, highly commercial in nature and very ephemeral. Books, the real kind, when they are good can stay with you for a very long time. A well-written story, be it fiction or non-fiction can have a long lastig impact and even an emotional connection that I have personally never experienced with anything 'online'. If you don't read books, you are missing out. Even only 1 or 2 books a year is a world of difference, even if those books aren't the best ones out there. This (as posted before) also has to do with the time investment and realtime one-to-one (you and the book) time. If you are having a hard time getting started, or keep reading a book to the finish, start with something light and perhaps... generic. Like a Dan Brown book. (and I know opinions vary wildly) Even a smaller book that might be more targeted as a children's book such as Neil Gaiman's 'Ocean at the end of the lane' are perfectly fine to get something going. Not everything will engage you, but making it easier for yourself to get started and enjoy some reading time is all it takes to enrich yourself. (which is perhaps not the best wording... but I'm no writer)

ipython 7y ago
+1 all the way. Online content is optimized not for quality but rather for clicks and interaction. As someone who grew up during the 90s the hope was that better quality would lead to more clicks. Clearly that’s not the case. As a technical author myself, I can speak to the effort required to create a book versus a blog post. A book requires you to think holistically about a topic- building a comprehensive outline of what you intend to cover. Then you have to write. A lot. If you’re a good writer (for example take w. Richard Stevens) your text will include not just the information you wish to convey but context around that topic which is paramount to a deeper understanding of the topic. Finally you go through a vetting process with other people in the industry. You’re challenged on your assertions, they help you correct errors, etc. Here the Wikipedia model may actually be superior as you are not limited in time or selection of experts for the tech editing phase. In contrast, blog posts or tweets are optimized for speed and engagement. Superficial yet sensational topics are emphasized, context is lost due to lack of time and space to write, and the quality of the writing is highly variable. Books are excellent and in fact I wrote my first tech book expressly because I found no good online resources for what I needed to know. I highly encourage people to read. It provides an excellent counterbalance to blogs and tweets.
- oneplane 7y ago
  Regarding the technical writing, that is indeed one of the very best examples when conveying an idea with a mindset or process on how that came to be (to varying degrees). It's not just a summary of facts or a list of tasks, but when well written it contains the core, the context, and how the core out of that context came to be. If the reader then reads it, they will not only learn the subject, but often also how that information was obtained in the first place and get a sense as to how the information was optimised for the subject, what was dismissed (and why) and often gives you a transfer of thought that allows you to continue to build on that instead of having to do the same exact learning process over again to get (and this is a lucky pun) on the same page. Conveying an idea is hard enough as it is with the languages we have, but writing it down and having to think ahead of time what the reader might think, might already know, and might want to do afterwards, or ponder about upon finishing the work, that is a very underestimated specialism. It enables not only knowledge transfer but practically brings the level of understanding of the reader(s) to a new minimum level (being a higher level than before but not everyone might get the same out of it). I work with a group of people in tech with varying backgrounds, ages and plans for the future, but when we need to make sure everyone has at least some equal foundation to start off from, we have at least one technical writeup (some chapters in a book, or a series of well written articles) combined with exercises to make sure that that base layer is there. You cannot really do that effectively if you were to try that with... tweets. Or just videos. Or a simple workshop. Getting somewhere still requires real work and real (time/attention) investment. Well written and researched information is at the center of this. Every now and then I read a technical book on a subject I am not familiar with or never had a real-life purpose for. For example, a lot of projects never had to use a custom data format with custom parsers, or a new domain-specific language. Yet reading a well written book on GNU Bison can be fantastic. (i.e. the Flex & Bison one from O'Reilly) Even if you end up never writing a .y file or having a need for a custom syntax parsing system. Strangely enough, while the subject is different, and the goal is different, it can be just as entertaining or maybe even enriching as reading The Gargoyle (by Andrew Davidson) 15 years ago. No relation in content or context except that both are books.
- hermitdev 7y ago
  Stevens's books are timeless. Yeah, they're labelled as "Unix", but they're really more about Posix to the most extent. Still very relevant today. My own copies are +20 years old, but useful enough that they have the least dust on my bookshelf (and I predominantly work on Windows).
viscanti 7y ago
> Online content is often low-quality, highly commercial in nature and very ephemeral. One question I ask myself when consuming online content is "would I pay any money for this". Generally the answer is no, the quality isn't there where I'd pay even a small amount of money. If I ask that same question with some high quality books the answer is that I would pay for it. I'm not taking a stand on if people should pay for content or not, but it's a useful rule of thumb for me. If the quality of content is so low that I'd never pay for it, I try to cut that content out and replace it with higher quality content (even if that means I actually do pay for it).
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  I like this. This is a great way of looking at low-effort online (or offline) drivel. Thanks for that.
ssivark 7y ago
To elaborate on what @oneplane said, and in response to OP: > I spend most of my day reading online articles/conversations, watching videos, and listening to podcasts [...] I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily conversations, YouTube videos, CliffsNotes, podcasts, Reddit posts/comments, blog articles, etc. I even find myself reading the comments and not reading the article most of the time. I'm fine with bullet point style summaries and don't care much about the fluff that fills most books I've read in the past. Unless you find a really good community, most online discussions are largely banal. It is possible to occasionally find good discussions about fairly concrete topics (technical, or one-step away from technical), but for everything else, it is largely a crapshoot. The quality distribution of content is such a sharp power law that it might be enough to read a couple of dozen good books in one's life to get that value -- but read them thoroughly and actively reflect on the message, rather than rifling through them for "collecting information". Really good ideas (deep truths) and really good communication tend to stay good for a long time (decades... centuries... millenia). The longer they've lasted the more likely they are to have true lasting value (otherwise why would anyone have bothered passing them down generations!? Check out the "Lindy effect"). Most new books haven't yet had the chance to get called out on -- assuming they are even interesting enough for that. I would rather spend more time listening to and thinking deeply about those messages from people who have thought as/more deeply about the topic. Since it takes very low-effort to post on the internet (relative to the effort to understand a subject), and it takes an order-of-magnitude more effort to cut through bullshit than to create it, online discussions will typically be dominated by bullshit (unless the community has exceptionally good regulating mechanisms). Since (most) people today are conditioned to be driven by convenience and novelty (rather than quality), forums are not particularly good even for curation -- I would rather trust specific individuals. For that reason, and the ubiquitous "sales culture" that has come about, I find contemporary discussions (including most contemporary books) to largely be undigested opinions spewed by people who have not thought deeply enough -- it's the Red Queen effect with people mostly trying to sell their messages (optimised for "engagement") better rather than actually improving the quality of their thinking. And advertizing is a very poor proxy for quality (irrespective of what market economists might try to argue). Any reference to "content" or "engagement" in the contemporary sense---the very notion that one can generalize across all ideas/messages, without thoughtful discrimination---makes me want to puke. ---- For 90% of the gain with 10% of the effort, how to find 2-5 good books to read each year? Here's the strategy which has worked for me so far: 1. Find a few authors (on the internet, or otherwise) whose thinking I admire/respect, and who I find to be speaking deeper truths than others. 2. Look at what they list as their most influential books; go read those books. Those books typically turn out to be faaaaar better than generic online "content". Digesting ideas from reading is much like a muscle to be built by exercise, to it gets easier after the first few books.
crazypython 7y ago
I would like to add something: Some books are written to get sold too. Some books in self-help and business fall into this category, most of them lose money, but a few make it out. Sometimes publishers publish trash when they know it, just because it's a book doesn't mean it's a good one.
- abnry 7y ago
  A few years ago I realized something: I am extremely skeptical of watching and buying into a random documentary but almost unquestioningly am willing to pick up a book. There are millions of published books out there and a lot of them are junk.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  Almost all books are written to be sold. Especially the ones that are for sale. Regarding books as somehow less commercial is an odd critique. Also, what's wrong with being commercial? We all have to work for a living, right? Just because something is sold doesn't mean it's making the world a worse place.
Symmetry 7y ago
There are short, easy to read non-fiction books too. It's easy to get through What We Know about Climate Change or Particle Physics, A Very Short Introduction in an evening.
- Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
  I found Feynman's "Six Easy Pieces" an interesting read in this vein.
Retric 7y ago
Plenty of great content can be found online. The Martian: rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published, Weir decided to put the book online in serial format one chapter at a time for free at his website. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel) Honestly, I have read hundreds of books, but my personal favorites are all online or started that way. Freedom means a lot of junk, but also stores that are truly different.
- kaybe 7y ago
  I second your notion. I read The Martian on the website while it was being published there. (Oh hey, the website is still alive even though the story is gone - http://www.galactanet.com/writing.html http://www.galactanet.com/writing.html) Any recommendations?
clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
+1 Books are good. Too much time spent attempting to min/max everything in life around here. Read a book every once in awhile.
awb 7y ago
> Online content is often low-quality, highly commercial in nature and very ephemeral. Books, the real kind, when they are good can stay with you for a very long time. You're comparing bad online content with good books. There are good and bad versions of each. Some of the most helpful, actionable content I've read in my life has been online. The benefit of online content is that it can be dynamic, interactive and updated. There are downsides too of course.

ipython 7y ago

+1 all the way. Online content is optimized not for quality but rather for clicks and interaction. As someone who grew up during the 90s the hope was that better quality would lead to more clicks. Clearly that’s not the case. As a technical author myself, I can speak to the effort required to create a book versus a blog post. A book requires you to think holistically about a topic- building a comprehensive outline of what you intend to cover. Then you have to write. A lot. If you’re a good writer (for example take w. Richard Stevens) your text will include not just the information you wish to convey but context around that topic which is paramount to a deeper understanding of the topic. Finally you go through a vetting process with other people in the industry. You’re challenged on your assertions, they help you correct errors, etc. Here the Wikipedia model may actually be superior as you are not limited in time or selection of experts for the tech editing phase. In contrast, blog posts or tweets are optimized for speed and engagement. Superficial yet sensational topics are emphasized, context is lost due to lack of time and space to write, and the quality of the writing is highly variable. Books are excellent and in fact I wrote my first tech book expressly because I found no good online resources for what I needed to know. I highly encourage people to read. It provides an excellent counterbalance to blogs and tweets.

oneplane 7y ago
Regarding the technical writing, that is indeed one of the very best examples when conveying an idea with a mindset or process on how that came to be (to varying degrees). It's not just a summary of facts or a list of tasks, but when well written it contains the core, the context, and how the core out of that context came to be. If the reader then reads it, they will not only learn the subject, but often also how that information was obtained in the first place and get a sense as to how the information was optimised for the subject, what was dismissed (and why) and often gives you a transfer of thought that allows you to continue to build on that instead of having to do the same exact learning process over again to get (and this is a lucky pun) on the same page. Conveying an idea is hard enough as it is with the languages we have, but writing it down and having to think ahead of time what the reader might think, might already know, and might want to do afterwards, or ponder about upon finishing the work, that is a very underestimated specialism. It enables not only knowledge transfer but practically brings the level of understanding of the reader(s) to a new minimum level (being a higher level than before but not everyone might get the same out of it). I work with a group of people in tech with varying backgrounds, ages and plans for the future, but when we need to make sure everyone has at least some equal foundation to start off from, we have at least one technical writeup (some chapters in a book, or a series of well written articles) combined with exercises to make sure that that base layer is there. You cannot really do that effectively if you were to try that with... tweets. Or just videos. Or a simple workshop. Getting somewhere still requires real work and real (time/attention) investment. Well written and researched information is at the center of this. Every now and then I read a technical book on a subject I am not familiar with or never had a real-life purpose for. For example, a lot of projects never had to use a custom data format with custom parsers, or a new domain-specific language. Yet reading a well written book on GNU Bison can be fantastic. (i.e. the Flex & Bison one from O'Reilly) Even if you end up never writing a .y file or having a need for a custom syntax parsing system. Strangely enough, while the subject is different, and the goal is different, it can be just as entertaining or maybe even enriching as reading The Gargoyle (by Andrew Davidson) 15 years ago. No relation in content or context except that both are books.
hermitdev 7y ago
Stevens's books are timeless. Yeah, they're labelled as "Unix", but they're really more about Posix to the most extent. Still very relevant today. My own copies are +20 years old, but useful enough that they have the least dust on my bookshelf (and I predominantly work on Windows).

viscanti 7y ago

> Online content is often low-quality, highly commercial in nature and very ephemeral. One question I ask myself when consuming online content is "would I pay any money for this". Generally the answer is no, the quality isn't there where I'd pay even a small amount of money. If I ask that same question with some high quality books the answer is that I would pay for it. I'm not taking a stand on if people should pay for content or not, but it's a useful rule of thumb for me. If the quality of content is so low that I'd never pay for it, I try to cut that content out and replace it with higher quality content (even if that means I actually do pay for it).

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
I like this. This is a great way of looking at low-effort online (or offline) drivel. Thanks for that.

ssivark 7y ago

To elaborate on what @oneplane said, and in response to OP: > I spend most of my day reading online articles/conversations, watching videos, and listening to podcasts [...] I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily conversations, YouTube videos, CliffsNotes, podcasts, Reddit posts/comments, blog articles, etc. I even find myself reading the comments and not reading the article most of the time. I'm fine with bullet point style summaries and don't care much about the fluff that fills most books I've read in the past. Unless you find a really good community, most online discussions are largely banal. It is possible to occasionally find good discussions about fairly concrete topics (technical, or one-step away from technical), but for everything else, it is largely a crapshoot. The quality distribution of content is such a sharp power law that it might be enough to read a couple of dozen good books in one's life to get that value -- but read them thoroughly and actively reflect on the message, rather than rifling through them for "collecting information". Really good ideas (deep truths) and really good communication tend to stay good for a long time (decades... centuries... millenia). The longer they've lasted the more likely they are to have true lasting value (otherwise why would anyone have bothered passing them down generations!? Check out the "Lindy effect"). Most new books haven't yet had the chance to get called out on -- assuming they are even interesting enough for that. I would rather spend more time listening to and thinking deeply about those messages from people who have thought as/more deeply about the topic. Since it takes very low-effort to post on the internet (relative to the effort to understand a subject), and it takes an order-of-magnitude more effort to cut through bullshit than to create it, online discussions will typically be dominated by bullshit (unless the community has exceptionally good regulating mechanisms). Since (most) people today are conditioned to be driven by convenience and novelty (rather than quality), forums are not particularly good even for curation -- I would rather trust specific individuals. For that reason, and the ubiquitous "sales culture" that has come about, I find contemporary discussions (including most contemporary books) to largely be undigested opinions spewed by people who have not thought deeply enough -- it's the Red Queen effect with people mostly trying to sell their messages (optimised for "engagement") better rather than actually improving the quality of their thinking. And advertizing is a very poor proxy for quality (irrespective of what market economists might try to argue). Any reference to "content" or "engagement" in the contemporary sense---the very notion that one can generalize across all ideas/messages, without thoughtful discrimination---makes me want to puke. ---- For 90% of the gain with 10% of the effort, how to find 2-5 good books to read each year? Here's the strategy which has worked for me so far: 1. Find a few authors (on the internet, or otherwise) whose thinking I admire/respect, and who I find to be speaking deeper truths than others. 2. Look at what they list as their most influential books; go read those books. Those books typically turn out to be faaaaar better than generic online "content". Digesting ideas from reading is much like a muscle to be built by exercise, to it gets easier after the first few books.

crazypython 7y ago

I would like to add something: Some books are written to get sold too. Some books in self-help and business fall into this category, most of them lose money, but a few make it out. Sometimes publishers publish trash when they know it, just because it's a book doesn't mean it's a good one.

abnry 7y ago
A few years ago I realized something: I am extremely skeptical of watching and buying into a random documentary but almost unquestioningly am willing to pick up a book. There are millions of published books out there and a lot of them are junk.
humanrebar 7y ago
Almost all books are written to be sold. Especially the ones that are for sale. Regarding books as somehow less commercial is an odd critique. Also, what's wrong with being commercial? We all have to work for a living, right? Just because something is sold doesn't mean it's making the world a worse place.

Symmetry 7y ago

There are short, easy to read non-fiction books too. It's easy to get through What We Know about Climate Change or Particle Physics, A Very Short Introduction in an evening.

Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
I found Feynman's "Six Easy Pieces" an interesting read in this vein.

Retric 7y ago

Plenty of great content can be found online. The Martian: rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published, Weir decided to put the book online in serial format one chapter at a time for free at his website. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel) Honestly, I have read hundreds of books, but my personal favorites are all online or started that way. Freedom means a lot of junk, but also stores that are truly different.

kaybe 7y ago
I second your notion. I read The Martian on the website while it was being published there. (Oh hey, the website is still alive even though the story is gone - http://www.galactanet.com/writing.html http://www.galactanet.com/writing.html) Any recommendations?

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago

+1 Books are good. Too much time spent attempting to min/max everything in life around here. Read a book every once in awhile.

awb 7y ago

> Online content is often low-quality, highly commercial in nature and very ephemeral. Books, the real kind, when they are good can stay with you for a very long time. You're comparing bad online content with good books. There are good and bad versions of each. Some of the most helpful, actionable content I've read in my life has been online. The benefit of online content is that it can be dynamic, interactive and updated. There are downsides too of course.