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Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" discusses this tension in detail. It was written in 1985 as an analysis of the effect of television on our atte

Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" discusses this tension in detail. It was written in 1985 as an analysis of the effect of television on our attention span but his conclusions are even more applicable to digital media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

whycombinater 4y ago
Star Trek: TNG episode "The Game" anyone?
Syonyk 4y ago
That was a depressing read, knowing where things went afterwards. //EDIT: Decent Roger Waters album, though. I should hunt it down on vinyl. "The Shallows" by Carr - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows_(book) - was even worse. Published in 2010, based on research dating up to about 2008, it said, "Huh. Reading stuff on a screen is weird. We need to be really, really careful about what we do with that going forward." And it was entirely ignored as we launched into the smartphone, attention-vampire model of personal electronics.
- thundergolfer 4y ago
  Ezra Klein Show has a good episode with the author of The Shallows[1]. 1. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nicholas-carr-on-deep-reading-and-digital-thinking/id1081584611?i=1000480085743 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nicholas-carr-on-deep-...
- daseiner1 4y ago
  Do you happen to know if there’s been any research into whether e-ink (thinking of my Kindle here) is any better than reading off of a traditional screen?
  - Syonyk 4y ago
    I'm not sure. I've moved most of my reading and reference material to e-ink (Kobo, I avoid Amazon in every way possible and de-DRM anything I can only find on them), and I think it's better than a LCD from a distraction perspective, but it lacks some of the "concrete physical location cues" of a real book. The Shallows talked about how hyperlinks and such were a major distraction point in reading web articles, so I'd imagine e-ink is better for book form, but... no, I don't know for sure. Sorry. I will say that people look at me funny when I tell them, after sending me an hour YouTube video on some topic, that I'd rather they send me the titles of three comprehensive books on it. If it's interesting to me, I'll read the books, and have a far better grasp on the topic than someone's biased, attention-focused video, though.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
      For me, it depends. There are good videos, and there are not so good books. Problem is, you can't know which is which before having seen/read them. Regarding Youtube, if you have an account there you can curate your experience. Any video you didn't like? Erase it from your history. Any channel whose producer kills your nerves with over-dramatizing, grimacing, adverts? Block it. Any channel which produces vapid fluff which you find uninformative, boring, etc.? Block it. Any channel which trends on the homepage, which you see when you go there without cookies, and logged out? Block them. That gives a vastly different experience, with much less trash. I guess I have a few hundred blocks now, and almost no subscriptions to any channels. Much better discoverability of new stuff that way, and no spam from subscribed channels either. Btw., who is saying that books aren't biased? ;-> Furthermore different people have different 'neuroarchitectures', habits, training, resulting in different 'learning experiences' and preferences. I think there are topics which profit from hyperlinking. Especially when complex and interlinked with other complex topics. But... it needs to be produced with 'readability' in mind, otherwise it's a mess. Think of it as a Mind- or Concept-map, maybe with something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorable_explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorable_explanation embedded , for getting an overview into something new. OTOH there are videos on YT where people just present something with a few slides, sometimes short animations which are excellent, no matter if hobbyist, some technical conference, or academic context. No comparison to something from History Channel, Disney, National Geographic, or such. While National Geographic has excellent 'production values', WTF they need to spoil that with background music? (This is the one thing that is aggravating me so much in documentaries.) Long story short: There are many things which can profit from animations, short video clips, or full documentary style. Also talented and competent speakers. See it as a thing where countless words, and maybe formulas and illustrations have been compressed into a 'flip-book', thereby reaching an information density which enables you to get into it fast, or even to understand it at all because it is so vast, needing that density to even try to get all that stuff across. Of course, if you're already deep into something, then most of what's available will only make you yawn. But still, I've been surprised by some things which I've thought I'd knew very well, but didn't :-) IMO hypermedia is the way to tackle the ever growing complexity of interdisciplinary science in general, and also for the sciences themselves. Linear books don't cut it anymore. Problem is we lack good tools/software/systems for authoring and combining it.
unraveller 4y ago
The morality of the medium used to be something up for debate until the wild wild internet won everyone over. The old critiques of TV fit alarmingly well with our present media landscape, what's sadder is they are rarely brought up even in digital minimalist topics. https://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2006/04/television-agent-of-truth-decay.html https://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2006/04/telev...
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  Ironically this article is presented like a sales slip on desktop, on the 'mobile first' platform.
eevilspock 4y ago
You might appreciate Stuart McMillen's The Amusing Ourselves to Death comic: Neil Postman’s ‘Orwell versus Huxley’ https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webcomic-2/ https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webc... Note from the creator, who had to remove it from his website at the request of Postman's estate: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/amusing-ourselves-to-death/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/amusing-ourselves-to-deat...

whycombinater 4y ago

Star Trek: TNG episode "The Game" anyone?

Syonyk 4y ago

That was a depressing read, knowing where things went afterwards. //EDIT: Decent Roger Waters album, though. I should hunt it down on vinyl. "The Shallows" by Carr - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows_(book) - was even worse. Published in 2010, based on research dating up to about 2008, it said, "Huh. Reading stuff on a screen is weird. We need to be really, really careful about what we do with that going forward." And it was entirely ignored as we launched into the smartphone, attention-vampire model of personal electronics.

thundergolfer 4y ago
Ezra Klein Show has a good episode with the author of The Shallows[1]. 1. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nicholas-carr-on-deep-reading-and-digital-thinking/id1081584611?i=1000480085743 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nicholas-carr-on-deep-...
daseiner1 4y ago
Do you happen to know if there’s been any research into whether e-ink (thinking of my Kindle here) is any better than reading off of a traditional screen?
- Syonyk 4y ago
  I'm not sure. I've moved most of my reading and reference material to e-ink (Kobo, I avoid Amazon in every way possible and de-DRM anything I can only find on them), and I think it's better than a LCD from a distraction perspective, but it lacks some of the "concrete physical location cues" of a real book. The Shallows talked about how hyperlinks and such were a major distraction point in reading web articles, so I'd imagine e-ink is better for book form, but... no, I don't know for sure. Sorry. I will say that people look at me funny when I tell them, after sending me an hour YouTube video on some topic, that I'd rather they send me the titles of three comprehensive books on it. If it's interesting to me, I'll read the books, and have a far better grasp on the topic than someone's biased, attention-focused video, though.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    For me, it depends. There are good videos, and there are not so good books. Problem is, you can't know which is which before having seen/read them. Regarding Youtube, if you have an account there you can curate your experience. Any video you didn't like? Erase it from your history. Any channel whose producer kills your nerves with over-dramatizing, grimacing, adverts? Block it. Any channel which produces vapid fluff which you find uninformative, boring, etc.? Block it. Any channel which trends on the homepage, which you see when you go there without cookies, and logged out? Block them. That gives a vastly different experience, with much less trash. I guess I have a few hundred blocks now, and almost no subscriptions to any channels. Much better discoverability of new stuff that way, and no spam from subscribed channels either. Btw., who is saying that books aren't biased? ;-> Furthermore different people have different 'neuroarchitectures', habits, training, resulting in different 'learning experiences' and preferences. I think there are topics which profit from hyperlinking. Especially when complex and interlinked with other complex topics. But... it needs to be produced with 'readability' in mind, otherwise it's a mess. Think of it as a Mind- or Concept-map, maybe with something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorable_explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorable_explanation embedded , for getting an overview into something new. OTOH there are videos on YT where people just present something with a few slides, sometimes short animations which are excellent, no matter if hobbyist, some technical conference, or academic context. No comparison to something from History Channel, Disney, National Geographic, or such. While National Geographic has excellent 'production values', WTF they need to spoil that with background music? (This is the one thing that is aggravating me so much in documentaries.) Long story short: There are many things which can profit from animations, short video clips, or full documentary style. Also talented and competent speakers. See it as a thing where countless words, and maybe formulas and illustrations have been compressed into a 'flip-book', thereby reaching an information density which enables you to get into it fast, or even to understand it at all because it is so vast, needing that density to even try to get all that stuff across. Of course, if you're already deep into something, then most of what's available will only make you yawn. But still, I've been surprised by some things which I've thought I'd knew very well, but didn't :-) IMO hypermedia is the way to tackle the ever growing complexity of interdisciplinary science in general, and also for the sciences themselves. Linear books don't cut it anymore. Problem is we lack good tools/software/systems for authoring and combining it.

unraveller 4y ago

The morality of the medium used to be something up for debate until the wild wild internet won everyone over. The old critiques of TV fit alarmingly well with our present media landscape, what's sadder is they are rarely brought up even in digital minimalist topics. https://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2006/04/television-agent-of-truth-decay.html https://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2006/04/telev...

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Ironically this article is presented like a sales slip on desktop, on the 'mobile first' platform.

eevilspock 4y ago

You might appreciate Stuart McMillen's The Amusing Ourselves to Death comic: Neil Postman’s ‘Orwell versus Huxley’ https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webcomic-2/ https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webc... Note from the creator, who had to remove it from his website at the request of Postman's estate: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/amusing-ourselves-to-death/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/amusing-ourselves-to-deat...