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I would recommends the Youtube rabbit hole of Neil Postman lectures from the early 1990's that outlines this very observation. ( I don't expect you to subscribe
by d_sem 3y ago
I would recommends the Youtube rabbit hole of Neil Postman lectures from the early 1990's that outlines this very observation. ( I don't expect you to subscribe to all his opinions, but he does attempt to analyze the impact of different media)
I won't go as far as to say reading is the only medium for self-development but I will challenge you, dear reader, to take a photo of a page of a book, then a photo of any modern website and compare the design elements. Books are less distracting, and are not designed to steal your personal agency with the strength super computers.
Books allow for greater introspective focus on complex ideas. In fact, some concepts worth learning require several hundred words to describe. Practicing the ability to singularly focus on long form thought is a great skill to have. It is a form of deep work/thinking.
- blueridge 3y ago+1 for anything by Neil Postman.
- akomtu 3y agoIt occured to me that a broken mirror is a good metaphor of what the modern web does to our attention. Instead of a whole smooth surface clearly reflecting the reality, our attention becomes shattered into many pieces, each reflecting something different. Books, due to a long continuous context, let us polish this mirror. For a similar reason, I guess, a typical exercise in the eastern tradition is to keep all your attention on one thing for a few minutes at least, and all the time, ideally. HN is, unfortunately, not very different: a stream of tiny disconnected comments shatter our attention if we read it too much.