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I'm Giving Up Reading for a Year
- lwat 14y agoSo brave
- marknutter 14y agoHi Reddit, welcome to HN :)
- switz 14y agoUnfortunately, the person who this post is directed at won't see it for at least a year.
- dkuntz2 14y agoSomeone could print it out for him to read...
- ifewalter 14y agoHe won't see it either. "No reading" remember?
- cocoflunchy 14y agoswitz was writing about Paul Miller (http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/30/2988798/paul-miller-year-without-internet http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/30/2988798/paul-miller-year-w...)
- vl 14y agoAh, this explains it. Original piece manages to be even more hilarious than the parody!
- mistercow 14y agoOr at least six weeks.
- bzloe 14y agoHe'll get cravings soon enough
- joedev 14y agoI give him 2 months.
- zhoutong 14y agoGiving up reading is just "harder" than giving up the Internet.
- throwaway0003 14y agoTake a look at this: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/30/2988798/paul-miller-year-without-internet http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/30/2988798/paul-miller-year-w...
- zhoutong 14y agoYes, I'm exactly referring to this.
- sparknlaunch12 14y agoWhy? Surely a balance can be made? I'm giving up reading "giving up" blog posts.
- bsphil 14y agoIt's satire.
- skeletonjelly 14y agoSatire on what?
- bsphil 14y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3910261 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3910261
- TheBiv 14y agoI understand the satire, I just would rather see this in the comments of the original article. This feels more like a slap rather a thoughtful critique.
- semisight 14y agoReally? It feels fairly well directed to me. The 'no internet' guy (who's name I've made a point to forget) was really egotistical about it. He even started an IAmA thread on reddit about it (link: http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/t14p6/table_iama_technology_journalist_im_leaving_the/ http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/t14p6/table_iama_tec...).
- TheBiv 14y agoYeah, that is a very good point. I guess I just wanted to see this conversation die along with the original article. Because the 'no internet' guy was no doubt just doing that as link bait. Now this will be the top post tomorrow and it will have added nothing of real value.
- ralfd 14y agoAt least he is honest. . > > If you had to guess what your one cracking point would be, what would it be? > Porn.
- psylence519 14y agoWhy does it merit thoughtful critique? Sometimes a slap is the correct response.
- TheBiv 14y agoIn real life, maybe...behind a computer, probably not...in my opinion!
- rubashov 14y agoI don't find this as quite a ridiculous idea as the satire presumably assumes. Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. --Albert Einstein
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- callil 14y agoA bit over the top. I have hope that his being away from the internet will force him to report of the personalities of tech by talking face to face or over the phone. I think in depth personal stories and interviews of tech founders/engineers/designers etc. are fascinating. It's a great opportunity for The Verge to set itself miles apart from the competition.
- bdhe 14y agoThis is as good a place and thread as any to write out some questions that have been bothering me. Maybe HN can help out. I've seen over the past several years several such posts (leaving facebook, leaving the internet, etc.) and they have a very raw emotional appeal to me. Some sort of a fast or a ritual quality to the entire idea. Do others here constantly wonder about their internet habits? I may be generalizing, but being uncomfortable or suspicious of gradual habits we develop, does that show characteristics of "getting old" and "conservative"? The get-off-my-lawn type of mentality? The same argument extends to smartphones, and "new fangled" tools such as twitter/foursquare/etc. Do others also perceive some tension in embracing a new lifestyle. Or am I overthinking it, and it is just a general equilibrium-maintaining feedback mechanism we develop through life. Because, with the internet (especially reddit and HN) and ubiquitous access to email/information through the smartphone I find myself, for the first time, cautious about embracing new technologies in a way I never felt before (not even when I got my first computer, or the first time I had cable TV ... of course, I was a kid back then). /end rant
- wattjustin 14y agoTake this quote from the original article for instance, "I’m also interested in a sans-internet reality as a technology writer. There was a time when technological innovation didn’t seem intimately linked to the internet." There was a time when using roads wasn’t linked to driving in a car, but there’s not much point in going back to that time. While I only have an undergraduate degree in Psychology and there are others who can speak to this topic in a lot more detail, I feel it allows me to say with confidence that the main concern is that the potential threat of limited time in our hectic lives being seeped from us by the internet (and technology in general) comes with the responsibility to use self control more than ever. Walking away from the internet for a year doesn't solve issues with self control and in a world so tightly integrated to the "new fangled" technological tools we use each day to make our lives easier, it's our responsibility to manage that, not walk away from it. To each their own and in the end, this was broadcast partially for page views, but embracing changing lifestyles and new technologies comes with personal responsibility. We all assess and compare ourselves with others to make sure we don't get carried away, but that doesn't mean we should walk away from something. I really should formulate my thoughts and feelings on this better before replying, but it's how I view the situation.
- tdfx 14y agoMost of the "general public" that I encounter have already made this commitment, but for a much longer duration.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoI'm honestly surprised it took this long.
- ifewalter 14y agoRANT ALERT!!! "No reading"? What do you do to SMS, email, parking tickets, expiry dates on foods, music details, your watch, video games........ Except you're gonna lock yourself in a room and have a maid do everything, quit kidding yourself. And please reply all our questions and comments, 'cos I'm sure you came back to read them.
- NZ_Matt 14y agoThe article is satire in response to this: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/30/2988798/paul-miller-year-without-internet http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/30/2988798/paul-miller-year-w... Perhaps a mod could add Satire to the thread title to avoid the confusion.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- zobzu 14y agoI'm giving up on giving a fuck for a year! Stay trendy my friends. (I actually started this one quite a few years ago and it's still going strong. Allow oneself to think on it's own a little more easily!)
- QuarkSpark 14y agohilarious stuff! you should also consider logging your last 3 hours of reading and post it online, like how your targeted audience for this post of yours just recently did! :D
- willurd 14y agoI was giving up before it was cool.
- dasil003 14y agoYeah, it used to just be "loser-talk"
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- winkerVSbecks 14y agoAh yes the I'm giving up_______ trend. I said the same thing in the post Paul Miller made. If you want to give up aspects of your life or stop using certain services – can you even call the Internet a service anymore – good for you. I will not to judge you but FFS stop making public announcements. If you're really doing it for yourself. Keep it to your self.
- Sivart13 14y agowhoosh
- BasDirks 14y ago> but being uncomfortable or suspicious of gradual habits we develop, does that show characteristics of "getting old" and "conservative"? The get-off-my-lawn type of mentality? Sounds like the opposite. I have over the past 3 years lived abroad for a total of ~4 months, in Italy and France. I helped build a house and a shed. I had my laptop with me, but internet was limited to an hour a day, 56k is still pricey. Once in a while I flip my world upside down, and it always makes me stronger. Sleeping in a 2x2m tower with spiders bigger than you've ever seen before is good for you, and breaks a lot of habits.
- pinchyfingers 14y agoWritten in response to this article: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/30/2988798/paul-miller-year-without-internet http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/30/2988798/paul-miller-year-w...
- bashzor 14y agoI think it's laughable what he does for pageviews. If you read all, you'll notice that's quite the only reason. Also if you read all, you might have discovered the Readability link at the very bottom. So just when you're done reading, the site offers to make reading it more comfortable.
- squiid 14y agoI'm also an avid reader, bordering on obsessive. As you described, I read not only devour books, magazines, and blog posts, but signs, labels, billboards, and anything else where words are printed. I just spent four months in South/east Asia, mostly Thailand, and because I can't read Thai script, my eyes and my brain have had a much needed break. I've been able to focus on reading only what I've conciously chosen to read and have eliminated all the 'passive' reading I do by habit. I've also been able to focus much more intensely on my work without distraction. For anyone who has the ability to work virtually and needs to focus deeply onas project, I highly recommend such a trip!
- jezclaremurugan 14y agoYou should do AMA in reddit.
- corwinstephen 14y agoThe Internet is Y-Combinator for sarcastic satire.
- SatvikBeri 14y agoI actually got a lot of benefit out of seriously cutting back my reading a couple of years ago. I found that rather than coming up with my own arguments and using examples from what I'd read to support them, I was just citing arguments from various books I'd read. It wasn't that I'd lost the capacity for original thought, but my mental habits had changed from trying to come up with something on my own to purely synthesizing and citing material I'd read elsewhere. Some more extreme but shorter versions of this that I've tried include putting myself in an environment with no words for a few days, and spending a day blindfolded.
- padobson 14y agoI love this piece. The Verge has become the philistine's Rolling Stone. It has all the pretentiousness, and none of the cultural value. Everytime I read something on the Verge, I can't help but feel like there's an air of timeless importance being attributed to things that will be forgotten a year from now. This might also simply stem from frustration over a systemic failure of technology writers to do their material any justice, or the press in general failing to keep people properly informed over the last 25 years. But maybe I'm curmudgeonyly. Maybe there is value in knowing about a bamboo phone[1] while SOPA and CISPA threaten to turn it into a weapon against us. There could be some good reason for me to know that Kanye is banging a Kardashian while our President is allowed to assassinate US citizens with a simple say-so.[2] I guess if I get a nice piece of satire like this every now and again, I'm good with it. [1] http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/2/2/2766670/adzero-bamboo-phone-university-student-design http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/2/2/2766670/adzero-bamboo-ph... [2] http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/obama-lawyers-citizens-targeted-war-us-154313473.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=US&.lang=en-US http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/obama-lawyers-citizen...
- cafard 14y agoI thought that Rolling Stone _was_ the philistine's Rolling Stone, but then nobody ever mistook me for Matthew Arnold.
- swah 14y agoThis isn't doable... I'll try to stick with "start your day as a producer, not a consumer".
- obtu 14y agohttp://youtu.be/EC0TDci9hqg http://youtu.be/EC0TDci9hqg — as mocked by Mitchell & Webb (That Mitchell & Webb Look series 2)
- w1ntermute 14y agoIronically, Paul Miller probably won't see this parody because he's not using the internet anymore.
- verminoth 14y agoHa ha ha ha, so great.