8 ms·

Text Is King

184 points by zdw 9mo ago

Shellban 9mo ago
Another advantage of text over the long-term: it is accessible for discussion. Let us say that you want to analyze, say, drinking culture in Ireland. You could write documentary on it, or do a fictional character study. However, those require actors, camera equipment, editing tools and time, and it generally extremely expensive and time consuming. A quick TikTok video may be a bit cheaper than a full-scale film, but still needs some of that equipment and cinematography skills. Music is not much better. You need skills in singing, translating ideas of rhythmic lyrics, as well as supplies for instruments. Writing, however, is simple. At minimum, all you need is paper and skill in articulating ideas. Almost anyone worthy to rationally ponder a topic already has the skills to put it to paper (assuming that they have gone through a proper First-World education and know reading and writing). Text is also one of the easiest to share. A picture is worth a thousand words, but that poses problems in sending all that information. Plain text, however (or even most rich-text formats) can be transferred to anyone over almost any protocol, even rudimentary ones such as word-of-mouth. Ideas shared through text can be sent at an unrivaled pace.
- Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
  This is why I think all video content should have auto generated transcripts for various reasons; subtitles, auto translations, but more importantly index- and searchability. You can't expect anyone to view 20 million videos a day to find trends in current day video discourse. In theory machines could do it, but it costs a fortune. But 20 million text transcripts? That's doable on someone's local machine.
  - pixl97 9mo ago
    >subtitles, auto translations, but more importantly index- and searchability. Google has this all for themselves, but they don't seem to give anyone else the ability to access the data easily so the last two points are a yes for them and a no for you.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- carlosjobim 9mo ago
  Talk is even easier. You just need to press record. Or not even that, go and talk with people or scream at people. Talking has always been superior to text, and most of the problems of industrialized society is that the majority of people have become psychotic brained by thinking that the written word is higher than the spoken word. The spoken word is of course superior, and has always been.
ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago
I would do more video, but video editing is really difficult. I think that today’s video influencers have gotten really good at “one take and done” recording. I couldn’t do that. I’m way too much of a perfectionist. I always edit my text, and I’ve been writing all my life. I don’t think that I’ve ever written something perfectly, the first time (including HN comments. I tend to go back and edit for correctness and clarity). A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed for a podcast. The process was fascinating, and the woman that did it, obviously does a great deal of editing and refinement. I don’t know if I have that much patience.
- piekvorst 9mo ago
  No prominent writer has ever said that writing came easy to them. I think it’s not wrong to feel this way.
- conductr 9mo ago
  There’s a lot of iterative script writing that goes into “one take” videos. I think they often appear to be one takes and that’s the polish or perfectionism you’re seeing. I mean, some of them are just rambling on and going more Vlog stuff. But even then they’ve likely already decided an agenda of discussion items and thoughts on them prior to just randomly going unfiltered. Although idk, our algorithms of content could be completely different and you’re truly seeing something else. Even short form video is a lot of work to be good at it and build a following unless there’s something else at play (charismatic, sex appeal, etc).
- uberstuber 9mo ago
  Tools like descript let you edit video by editing the transcript text
JamesTRexx 9mo ago
Text is my favourite minimalistic medium. I keep a minimum eye on regular news through teletext and tech news via Slashdot and here because there are barely any distractions from the core content. It's also very flexible in that I can immediately return to a previous sentence without needing intermediate steps like rewinding a video or audio format. I can copy parts into another document for reasons. It's easier to search. This is also what makes learning from a book so much better than video (besides not needing batteries for it).
- volemo 9mo ago
  But a book is neither searchable, nor easily copyable. :/
  - mold_aid 9mo ago
    I guess the latter depends on your standards for "ease" and the former your ability to find an "index"
  - squigz 9mo ago
    Ebooks are
  - t-3 9mo ago
    OCR exists, and the vast majority of new books are developed on computers and are available in a searchable and copyable format. Ebook software for research and collaboration is not as developed as software purely for linear reading, but there's no huge blockers.
    - volemo 9mo ago
      GP is obviously talking about regular paper books: > besides not needing batteries for it
      - JamesTRexx 9mo ago
        Actually, analogue and digital versions. Both have their pros and cons.
boredemployee 9mo ago
>> Books are disappearing from our culture, and so are our capacities for complex and rational thought. are they? maybe it's a cultural thing or maybe the author's perspective is from 1st world countries. here where I live ppl can't stand reading books on digital devices (not counting tech bros in my N)
- Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
  It's just the introduction that highlights the "reading is doomed!" narrative, the rest of the article says it's not actually so bad.
- mghackerlady 9mo ago
  It's not people moving to ebooks, the amount of people I know personally who are proud of never having read a book for pleasure or not having done so in a very long time is absurd. Today's high schoolers struggle to read at a 6th grade level, and don't see that as an issue since literacy is seen in a similar way to vinyl records (something archaic and pointless that a rare few still enjoy but has largely been replaced by modern technology)
n4r9 9mo ago
Text is searchable, skippable, scrollable, compact, transmissible, and accessible in a way that audio and video have never managed to be.
- piekvorst 9mo ago
  It’s also runnable (scripts), clickable (urls), and context-dependent, which makes it a nice UI.
- lelanthran 9mo ago
  > Text is searchable, skippable, scrollable, compact, transmissible, and accessible in a way that audio and video have never managed to be. That's just a very long way of saying it's difficult to monetise; it's why audio and video are preferred by producers of content. Few people are interested in disseminating an idea, a concept, anything... they are interested in levelling up their fame and followers. Text is typically no good for that.
  - CuriouslyC 9mo ago
    Video keeps blowing up because people want to connect with humans, and life is making that harder than it needs to be, so people are settling for these weird parasocial echo chambers. With the rise of AI, all text is suspect, and authenticity is king.
    - 6031769 9mo ago
      With the rise of AI, all audio, images and video is now also suspect.
      - CuriouslyC 9mo ago
        True, but it's a lot harder to sneak those things than text. I've seen convincing Yanis Varifakis and Neil DeGrasse Tyson fakes, but even those don't survive any scrutiny. I'm sure that will change, and people will find new ways to signal authenticity in videos (leaving in fuckups is already in style).
kalleboo 9mo ago
The reason video is winning is because you can make a living on video advertising. It's not really possible in this day to make a living on writing, outside of specific niches. So people who are good at writing use that skill to make video scripts, not blogs or books.
- Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
  Yup; I'd make the claim (as an internet commenter, not an expert) that audio / video is more aimed at passive entertainment, whereas reading and more importantly deep comprehension etc takes more effort and time, and it's harder to monetize. Not impossible, mind - the author posted this on Substack which is a way that one can monetize writing (blogpost style articles anyway).
  - pixl97 9mo ago
    Just about anyone being able to make money from writing also seems like a somewhat modern aberration. Pre-printing press typically only the very wealthy had access to paper and ink, the process of copying a book was a huge undertaking. Printing press opened things up, but paper was still rather expensive for quite some time. It wasn't until the 1900s that the book-splosion really took off. With the take off of cheap paper products we switched from what you could write, to what could you get published and mass printed as the main gatekeeper. This paradigm stood for around 100 years. With the rapid growth of both the internet and digital technology as a whole, anyone could write and 'publish online'. For a time this was lucrative as content was king and brought eyeballs. The internet was still slow enough for most that other forms of high bandwidth content were still luxury goods. By 2010 the internet and smartphones were to the place that non-text media was where all the money was going. With the rise of the influencer a company could give a moderate amount of advertising dollars to an individual and get an oversized return on it. At the same time social media was gating off large amounts of text and people from the internet at large. Add to this the copying of text content in order to steal advertising dollars and clicks (think stack overflow copies and the like). Google and the other large social media companies with the advertising platforms greatly reduced the payout for text content and things moved to multi-media/video for the advertising dollar. The latest rage is shorts to keep ones ADHD addled mind locked to the screen for hours without moving. With LLMs crapping out text who knows what our future of earning money with words looks like. Also, it's likely that AI driving virtual world will grab the attention of the masses, much like a personalized video game with the ability to be as addictive as our most dangerous drugs.
wosined 9mo ago
As I counter claim to the one that today is more recorded than ever, one could suggest that these recordings are not guaranteed to last long, not even the span of one lifetime.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
yomismoaqui 9mo ago
In an LLM world text will also be is king. Sure, LLMs can understand images and video, but when you make your program spit debug text you make it easier and faster for Claude Code to iterate on it and fix any problems. See how much value does a text UI program like Claude Code provide, it really doesn't need anything else than cannot be done in a terminal.
- xnorswap 9mo ago
  > it really doesn't need anything else than cannot be done in a terminal I strongly disagree with this. Claude-code would be super-powered if it had a better grasp of running processes without logging output. Imagine if it could somehow directly trace running programs, spotting exceptions and gauging performance in real-time. It would be super-powered if it could actually navigate around a code-base and refactor through language servers without having to edit files through search & replace. Imagine if instead of code, the program was first compiled to an Abstract Syntax Tree and claude worked directly on that AST instead of code. Never a misplaced semi-colon* or forgotten import directive. It needs a fundamentally different model to an LLM to operate it, but I'm convinced that thinking that Text is the endgame is a form of blub. It's where we are now, and it's working very well, but it shouldn't be considered the long term goal. We can do better. * To be fair, this one hasn't been an issue for a while now.
  - furyofantares 9mo ago
    For small games I work on I make sure claude (well, codex cli) can produce screenshots of whatever screen it's working on and evaluate them. It has some instructions on using codex exec (claude -p) to use a clean instance for evaluation, so it can pass a screenshot and description of expectation and get a pass/fail and description of the failure. The main agent can also just view the image but for things with a clear pass/fail I prefer it invoke a clean context.
smartmic 9mo ago
Not all reading is the same. In other words, I wish this article had differentiated between different types of reading. For example, I read that many young adults have picked up reading "new adult" genre books. They enjoy the physical experience of an analog medium and consume one edition after another of popular series. This sounds fine at first, but the content is problematic. These books are not literature, and they may convey problematic views of behavior. For example, they may perpetuate outdated views of relationships between men and women, portraying them as unequal and reproducing clichéd stereotypes from the last millennium. In short, the article focuses only on the amount of reading, but the content is also important. This should be part of the equation.
- b112 9mo ago
  I see no reference to this in the article. Nor have you explained why these books are "not literature". This sounds like someone looking at a piece of art, and saying "that's not art". As we're referencing young adults here, they already have a degree of understanding of the world today. Reading of the past, gives historical context to how the world is today, to why the world is as it is today. I'd have hoped they'd been well exposed to such things in school, and you can be absolutely sure they've been exposed to such things in movies, or music (have you heard some rap music?), or.. you know, this thing called the Internet. In 12 seconds I can find more untoward content on the Internet, than I could in an entire library or book store.
- coffeefirst 9mo ago
  When I was that age I read a lot of science fiction series. I had friends reading what they called “trashy romance”—they knew it was in no way realistic. This was also during peak Harry Potter, which is literary street food, and I say that as a compliment. Most of us read other stuff too, but realistically, dense English lit was confined to English class. So this isn’t new and I don’t see the problem. As for the “views,” by this standard kids shouldn’t read A Tale of Two Cities because it encourages beheadings.
  - patrickmay 9mo ago
    Upvote for "literary street food." Thanks for that.
ofalkaed 9mo ago
What is dying when it comes to text is entertainment and some areas of non-fiction, things which really are not the strength of written language; it is capable of these thing but other mediums are far better at it, but even in those areas it has some strengths and ability which other mediums lack. The primary strength of written language is communication, it removes the abstraction and all those things which hinder communication like the look of frustration on my face being taken as frustration with the person I am speaking to when it is really frustration with my own difficulties in expressing what I want to express and find those right words which will not be taken any other way than as I meant them. Writing is not dying and is not going to die anytime soon, people use it more than they ever have for communication in this texting and emailing world and writing will be continued to be used for those areas where it is undeniable king. What can explore the inner world of people better than the written word? what can develop and explore idea to the extent and depth of the written word? All those unfilmable books that keep being read are works which exploit the strengths of the written word to express things which no other medium can without a great deal of abstraction and becoming so experimental that only a tiny niche can appreciate them and a much smaller niche than the niche that is literature.
RunSet 9mo ago
Isaac Asimov, "The Ancient and the The Ultimate", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1973 https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v044n01_1973-01/page/n119/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v044n01_...
scandox 9mo ago
Elite people don't take books as seriously anymore. That's what's happening. The prestige of serious books is diminishing. The referencing of serious books in mainstream culture is diminishing. If 8 billion people all read one shit book that's all well and good - literacy is saved. But if the people who currently influence events do not read good books, care to be seen to read good books and consider the opinions of the writers of good books important ... then I think it's not good.
ifh-hn 9mo ago
I understand the first paragraph is set to draw you in but honestly I was thing with every sentence: speak for yourself. None of it describes me. It's also not my experience in general, but maybe me and those around me are odd?
- ternaryoperator 9mo ago
  Well, given the detailed statistics re reading in the US, I think she is speaking for more than herself, no?
ravenstine 9mo ago
People might still be reading, statistically speaking. But what are they reading? Almost everyone I talk to offline either reads fantasy, trashy romance, or feel-good self help books. I gotta tell ya, we all have our cheap pleasures now and then, but rarely do I meet anyone who reads anything remotely profound or thought-provoking. The only exception might be my father who reads a lot of historical fiction and non-fiction. Maybe I'm just hanging in the wrong crowds. In terms of the sources the author cites, exactly how much should we trust them? For example, book sales may have increased in recent years, but are people actually reading them? I remember a recent statistic where it turned out most people who buy vinyl records don't even own a record player; what if people are buying books so they can sit on a shelf? And what's so special about books in particular, anyway? What's wrong with reading articles and webpages? I'd be more interested in whether those are declining since they are less tethered to entertainment, like books are.
- MichaelRo 9mo ago
  >> And what's so special about books in particular, anyway? What's wrong with reading articles and webpages? Nothing, really, but I suspect that is declining too. I read historical books mostly, some 4-5 per year. Like last time I ordered "Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWS", in English because unfortunately it wasn't yet translated in my native language. But other than that I still read printed magazines. One that my father used to read so I picked the habit from him and used to be weekly but now it's bi-monthly because ... fewer readers. And I read a ton of online articles. But you can notice the repeating pattern: read, read, read. Because I got good at it waay before there was an alternative, and because of that, the alternative has supplanted but never replaced the original. But my kid? Never read anything in his life that wasn't forced upon him. And the whole new generation is like this. He can read because can't function in the modern world without it but reading as primary source of gathering information? No chance. I suspect this gets us back to medieval times where there are a few erudites and lots of imbeciles, my son included.
  - Fr0styMatt88 9mo ago
    You know it’s really strange when I think about it. I no longer feel motivated to read books mostly, but I could easily spend an hour or two a day reading HN comments and Reddit threads. Although part of that I’m sure is that as I’m visually impaired, reading physical books is far more tiring than reading off a screen where I can make the text the exact size I want. Used to be a voracious reader as a kid (though 99% non-fiction).
ksherlock 9mo ago
Back before written deeds and the county clerk keeping track of land ownership, it was handled by memory. So they would have a young boy witness the land transfer, on the theory that if there was a dispute 30 or 40 years into the future, he could testify that the transfer happened. And to help him remember, they would nail him in the 'nads. Point being, dudes getting nailed in the 'nads has a rich historical tradition that pre-dates writing.
- bayesnet 9mo ago
  Ok I just had to look this up. There’s a kernel of truth but I didn’t find evidence of genital mutilation: “Sometimes the boys were whipped or violently bumped on the boundary stones to make them remember”( “Beating the bounds”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beating_the_bounds?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beating_the_bounds?wprov=sfti1 )
BinaryIgor 9mo ago
"Perhaps there are frontiers of digital addiction we have yet to reach. Maybe one day we’ll all have Neuralinks that beam Instagram Reels directly into our primary visual cortex, and then reading will really be toast." Even then, smart people will care about dissecting ideas, explore new concepts and broaden their understanding - and for most of it, Text Is King.
andrewshadura 9mo ago
Referring to a recent debate on HN, if text is king, what is queen?
teekert 9mo ago
Boring books? Sure I grab the phone. I’m probably as addicted as anyone. Bobbiverse? I drop the phone and read all five parts during any spare minute I have. So there’s that anacdote.
- Insanity 9mo ago
  I finished the first two bobbiverse books, then got sidetracked during the third book (reading Guns, Germs and Steel) and am now on a history/biology binge instead. But that said, the first two were great books and I'll get back to the third book once I've finished my non-fiction cycle. (I tend to go back and forth lol)
MarceliusK 9mo ago
Even if people read fewer books cover to cover, text still seems to be the medium where ideas actually get nailed down, argued over, and preserved

184 points by zdw 9mo ago

Another advantage of text over the long-term: it is accessible for discussion. Let us say that you want to analyze, say, drinking culture in Ireland. You could write documentary on it, or do a fictional character study. However, those require actors, camera equipment, editing tools and time, and it generally extremely expensive and time consuming. A quick TikTok video may be a bit cheaper than a full-scale film, but still needs some of that equipment and cinematography skills. Music is not much better. You need skills in singing, translating ideas of rhythmic lyrics, as well as supplies for instruments. Writing, however, is simple. At minimum, all you need is paper and skill in articulating ideas. Almost anyone worthy to rationally ponder a topic already has the skills to put it to paper (assuming that they have gone through a proper First-World education and know reading and writing). Text is also one of the easiest to share. A picture is worth a thousand words, but that poses problems in sending all that information. Plain text, however (or even most rich-text formats) can be transferred to anyone over almost any protocol, even rudimentary ones such as word-of-mouth. Ideas shared through text can be sent at an unrivaled pace.

Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
This is why I think all video content should have auto generated transcripts for various reasons; subtitles, auto translations, but more importantly index- and searchability. You can't expect anyone to view 20 million videos a day to find trends in current day video discourse. In theory machines could do it, but it costs a fortune. But 20 million text transcripts? That's doable on someone's local machine.
- pixl97 9mo ago
  >subtitles, auto translations, but more importantly index- and searchability. Google has this all for themselves, but they don't seem to give anyone else the ability to access the data easily so the last two points are a yes for them and a no for you.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
carlosjobim 9mo ago
Talk is even easier. You just need to press record. Or not even that, go and talk with people or scream at people. Talking has always been superior to text, and most of the problems of industrialized society is that the majority of people have become psychotic brained by thinking that the written word is higher than the spoken word. The spoken word is of course superior, and has always been.

ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago

I would do more video, but video editing is really difficult. I think that today’s video influencers have gotten really good at “one take and done” recording. I couldn’t do that. I’m way too much of a perfectionist. I always edit my text, and I’ve been writing all my life. I don’t think that I’ve ever written something perfectly, the first time (including HN comments. I tend to go back and edit for correctness and clarity). A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed for a podcast. The process was fascinating, and the woman that did it, obviously does a great deal of editing and refinement. I don’t know if I have that much patience.

piekvorst 9mo ago
No prominent writer has ever said that writing came easy to them. I think it’s not wrong to feel this way.
conductr 9mo ago
There’s a lot of iterative script writing that goes into “one take” videos. I think they often appear to be one takes and that’s the polish or perfectionism you’re seeing. I mean, some of them are just rambling on and going more Vlog stuff. But even then they’ve likely already decided an agenda of discussion items and thoughts on them prior to just randomly going unfiltered. Although idk, our algorithms of content could be completely different and you’re truly seeing something else. Even short form video is a lot of work to be good at it and build a following unless there’s something else at play (charismatic, sex appeal, etc).
uberstuber 9mo ago
Tools like descript let you edit video by editing the transcript text

JamesTRexx 9mo ago

Text is my favourite minimalistic medium. I keep a minimum eye on regular news through teletext and tech news via Slashdot and here because there are barely any distractions from the core content. It's also very flexible in that I can immediately return to a previous sentence without needing intermediate steps like rewinding a video or audio format. I can copy parts into another document for reasons. It's easier to search. This is also what makes learning from a book so much better than video (besides not needing batteries for it).

volemo 9mo ago
But a book is neither searchable, nor easily copyable. :/
- mold_aid 9mo ago
  I guess the latter depends on your standards for "ease" and the former your ability to find an "index"
- squigz 9mo ago
  Ebooks are
- t-3 9mo ago
  OCR exists, and the vast majority of new books are developed on computers and are available in a searchable and copyable format. Ebook software for research and collaboration is not as developed as software purely for linear reading, but there's no huge blockers.
  - volemo 9mo ago
    GP is obviously talking about regular paper books: > besides not needing batteries for it
    - JamesTRexx 9mo ago
      Actually, analogue and digital versions. Both have their pros and cons.

boredemployee 9mo ago

>> Books are disappearing from our culture, and so are our capacities for complex and rational thought. are they? maybe it's a cultural thing or maybe the author's perspective is from 1st world countries. here where I live ppl can't stand reading books on digital devices (not counting tech bros in my N)

Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
It's just the introduction that highlights the "reading is doomed!" narrative, the rest of the article says it's not actually so bad.
mghackerlady 9mo ago
It's not people moving to ebooks, the amount of people I know personally who are proud of never having read a book for pleasure or not having done so in a very long time is absurd. Today's high schoolers struggle to read at a 6th grade level, and don't see that as an issue since literacy is seen in a similar way to vinyl records (something archaic and pointless that a rare few still enjoy but has largely been replaced by modern technology)

n4r9 9mo ago

Text is searchable, skippable, scrollable, compact, transmissible, and accessible in a way that audio and video have never managed to be.

piekvorst 9mo ago
It’s also runnable (scripts), clickable (urls), and context-dependent, which makes it a nice UI.
lelanthran 9mo ago
> Text is searchable, skippable, scrollable, compact, transmissible, and accessible in a way that audio and video have never managed to be. That's just a very long way of saying it's difficult to monetise; it's why audio and video are preferred by producers of content. Few people are interested in disseminating an idea, a concept, anything... they are interested in levelling up their fame and followers. Text is typically no good for that.
- CuriouslyC 9mo ago
  Video keeps blowing up because people want to connect with humans, and life is making that harder than it needs to be, so people are settling for these weird parasocial echo chambers. With the rise of AI, all text is suspect, and authenticity is king.
  - 6031769 9mo ago
    With the rise of AI, all audio, images and video is now also suspect.
    - CuriouslyC 9mo ago
      True, but it's a lot harder to sneak those things than text. I've seen convincing Yanis Varifakis and Neil DeGrasse Tyson fakes, but even those don't survive any scrutiny. I'm sure that will change, and people will find new ways to signal authenticity in videos (leaving in fuckups is already in style).

kalleboo 9mo ago

The reason video is winning is because you can make a living on video advertising. It's not really possible in this day to make a living on writing, outside of specific niches. So people who are good at writing use that skill to make video scripts, not blogs or books.

Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
Yup; I'd make the claim (as an internet commenter, not an expert) that audio / video is more aimed at passive entertainment, whereas reading and more importantly deep comprehension etc takes more effort and time, and it's harder to monetize. Not impossible, mind - the author posted this on Substack which is a way that one can monetize writing (blogpost style articles anyway).
- pixl97 9mo ago
  Just about anyone being able to make money from writing also seems like a somewhat modern aberration. Pre-printing press typically only the very wealthy had access to paper and ink, the process of copying a book was a huge undertaking. Printing press opened things up, but paper was still rather expensive for quite some time. It wasn't until the 1900s that the book-splosion really took off. With the take off of cheap paper products we switched from what you could write, to what could you get published and mass printed as the main gatekeeper. This paradigm stood for around 100 years. With the rapid growth of both the internet and digital technology as a whole, anyone could write and 'publish online'. For a time this was lucrative as content was king and brought eyeballs. The internet was still slow enough for most that other forms of high bandwidth content were still luxury goods. By 2010 the internet and smartphones were to the place that non-text media was where all the money was going. With the rise of the influencer a company could give a moderate amount of advertising dollars to an individual and get an oversized return on it. At the same time social media was gating off large amounts of text and people from the internet at large. Add to this the copying of text content in order to steal advertising dollars and clicks (think stack overflow copies and the like). Google and the other large social media companies with the advertising platforms greatly reduced the payout for text content and things moved to multi-media/video for the advertising dollar. The latest rage is shorts to keep ones ADHD addled mind locked to the screen for hours without moving. With LLMs crapping out text who knows what our future of earning money with words looks like. Also, it's likely that AI driving virtual world will grab the attention of the masses, much like a personalized video game with the ability to be as addictive as our most dangerous drugs.

wosined 9mo ago

As I counter claim to the one that today is more recorded than ever, one could suggest that these recordings are not guaranteed to last long, not even the span of one lifetime.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

yomismoaqui 9mo ago

In an LLM world text will also be is king. Sure, LLMs can understand images and video, but when you make your program spit debug text you make it easier and faster for Claude Code to iterate on it and fix any problems. See how much value does a text UI program like Claude Code provide, it really doesn't need anything else than cannot be done in a terminal.

xnorswap 9mo ago
> it really doesn't need anything else than cannot be done in a terminal I strongly disagree with this. Claude-code would be super-powered if it had a better grasp of running processes without logging output. Imagine if it could somehow directly trace running programs, spotting exceptions and gauging performance in real-time. It would be super-powered if it could actually navigate around a code-base and refactor through language servers without having to edit files through search & replace. Imagine if instead of code, the program was first compiled to an Abstract Syntax Tree and claude worked directly on that AST instead of code. Never a misplaced semi-colon* or forgotten import directive. It needs a fundamentally different model to an LLM to operate it, but I'm convinced that thinking that Text is the endgame is a form of blub. It's where we are now, and it's working very well, but it shouldn't be considered the long term goal. We can do better. * To be fair, this one hasn't been an issue for a while now.
- furyofantares 9mo ago
  For small games I work on I make sure claude (well, codex cli) can produce screenshots of whatever screen it's working on and evaluate them. It has some instructions on using codex exec (claude -p) to use a clean instance for evaluation, so it can pass a screenshot and description of expectation and get a pass/fail and description of the failure. The main agent can also just view the image but for things with a clear pass/fail I prefer it invoke a clean context.

smartmic 9mo ago

Not all reading is the same. In other words, I wish this article had differentiated between different types of reading. For example, I read that many young adults have picked up reading "new adult" genre books. They enjoy the physical experience of an analog medium and consume one edition after another of popular series. This sounds fine at first, but the content is problematic. These books are not literature, and they may convey problematic views of behavior. For example, they may perpetuate outdated views of relationships between men and women, portraying them as unequal and reproducing clichéd stereotypes from the last millennium. In short, the article focuses only on the amount of reading, but the content is also important. This should be part of the equation.

b112 9mo ago
I see no reference to this in the article. Nor have you explained why these books are "not literature". This sounds like someone looking at a piece of art, and saying "that's not art". As we're referencing young adults here, they already have a degree of understanding of the world today. Reading of the past, gives historical context to how the world is today, to why the world is as it is today. I'd have hoped they'd been well exposed to such things in school, and you can be absolutely sure they've been exposed to such things in movies, or music (have you heard some rap music?), or.. you know, this thing called the Internet. In 12 seconds I can find more untoward content on the Internet, than I could in an entire library or book store.
coffeefirst 9mo ago
When I was that age I read a lot of science fiction series. I had friends reading what they called “trashy romance”—they knew it was in no way realistic. This was also during peak Harry Potter, which is literary street food, and I say that as a compliment. Most of us read other stuff too, but realistically, dense English lit was confined to English class. So this isn’t new and I don’t see the problem. As for the “views,” by this standard kids shouldn’t read A Tale of Two Cities because it encourages beheadings.
- patrickmay 9mo ago
  Upvote for "literary street food." Thanks for that.

ofalkaed 9mo ago

What is dying when it comes to text is entertainment and some areas of non-fiction, things which really are not the strength of written language; it is capable of these thing but other mediums are far better at it, but even in those areas it has some strengths and ability which other mediums lack. The primary strength of written language is communication, it removes the abstraction and all those things which hinder communication like the look of frustration on my face being taken as frustration with the person I am speaking to when it is really frustration with my own difficulties in expressing what I want to express and find those right words which will not be taken any other way than as I meant them. Writing is not dying and is not going to die anytime soon, people use it more than they ever have for communication in this texting and emailing world and writing will be continued to be used for those areas where it is undeniable king. What can explore the inner world of people better than the written word? what can develop and explore idea to the extent and depth of the written word? All those unfilmable books that keep being read are works which exploit the strengths of the written word to express things which no other medium can without a great deal of abstraction and becoming so experimental that only a tiny niche can appreciate them and a much smaller niche than the niche that is literature.

RunSet 9mo ago

Isaac Asimov, "The Ancient and the The Ultimate", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1973 https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v044n01_1973-01/page/n119/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v044n01_...

scandox 9mo ago

Elite people don't take books as seriously anymore. That's what's happening. The prestige of serious books is diminishing. The referencing of serious books in mainstream culture is diminishing. If 8 billion people all read one shit book that's all well and good - literacy is saved. But if the people who currently influence events do not read good books, care to be seen to read good books and consider the opinions of the writers of good books important ... then I think it's not good.

ifh-hn 9mo ago

I understand the first paragraph is set to draw you in but honestly I was thing with every sentence: speak for yourself. None of it describes me. It's also not my experience in general, but maybe me and those around me are odd?

ternaryoperator 9mo ago
Well, given the detailed statistics re reading in the US, I think she is speaking for more than herself, no?

ravenstine 9mo ago

People might still be reading, statistically speaking. But what are they reading? Almost everyone I talk to offline either reads fantasy, trashy romance, or feel-good self help books. I gotta tell ya, we all have our cheap pleasures now and then, but rarely do I meet anyone who reads anything remotely profound or thought-provoking. The only exception might be my father who reads a lot of historical fiction and non-fiction. Maybe I'm just hanging in the wrong crowds. In terms of the sources the author cites, exactly how much should we trust them? For example, book sales may have increased in recent years, but are people actually reading them? I remember a recent statistic where it turned out most people who buy vinyl records don't even own a record player; what if people are buying books so they can sit on a shelf? And what's so special about books in particular, anyway? What's wrong with reading articles and webpages? I'd be more interested in whether those are declining since they are less tethered to entertainment, like books are.

MichaelRo 9mo ago
>> And what's so special about books in particular, anyway? What's wrong with reading articles and webpages? Nothing, really, but I suspect that is declining too. I read historical books mostly, some 4-5 per year. Like last time I ordered "Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWS", in English because unfortunately it wasn't yet translated in my native language. But other than that I still read printed magazines. One that my father used to read so I picked the habit from him and used to be weekly but now it's bi-monthly because ... fewer readers. And I read a ton of online articles. But you can notice the repeating pattern: read, read, read. Because I got good at it waay before there was an alternative, and because of that, the alternative has supplanted but never replaced the original. But my kid? Never read anything in his life that wasn't forced upon him. And the whole new generation is like this. He can read because can't function in the modern world without it but reading as primary source of gathering information? No chance. I suspect this gets us back to medieval times where there are a few erudites and lots of imbeciles, my son included.
- Fr0styMatt88 9mo ago
  You know it’s really strange when I think about it. I no longer feel motivated to read books mostly, but I could easily spend an hour or two a day reading HN comments and Reddit threads. Although part of that I’m sure is that as I’m visually impaired, reading physical books is far more tiring than reading off a screen where I can make the text the exact size I want. Used to be a voracious reader as a kid (though 99% non-fiction).

ksherlock 9mo ago

Back before written deeds and the county clerk keeping track of land ownership, it was handled by memory. So they would have a young boy witness the land transfer, on the theory that if there was a dispute 30 or 40 years into the future, he could testify that the transfer happened. And to help him remember, they would nail him in the 'nads. Point being, dudes getting nailed in the 'nads has a rich historical tradition that pre-dates writing.

bayesnet 9mo ago
Ok I just had to look this up. There’s a kernel of truth but I didn’t find evidence of genital mutilation: “Sometimes the boys were whipped or violently bumped on the boundary stones to make them remember”( “Beating the bounds”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beating_the_bounds?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beating_the_bounds?wprov=sfti1 )

BinaryIgor 9mo ago

"Perhaps there are frontiers of digital addiction we have yet to reach. Maybe one day we’ll all have Neuralinks that beam Instagram Reels directly into our primary visual cortex, and then reading will really be toast." Even then, smart people will care about dissecting ideas, explore new concepts and broaden their understanding - and for most of it, Text Is King.

andrewshadura 9mo ago

Referring to a recent debate on HN, if text is king, what is queen?

teekert 9mo ago

Boring books? Sure I grab the phone. I’m probably as addicted as anyone. Bobbiverse? I drop the phone and read all five parts during any spare minute I have. So there’s that anacdote.

Insanity 9mo ago
I finished the first two bobbiverse books, then got sidetracked during the third book (reading Guns, Germs and Steel) and am now on a history/biology binge instead. But that said, the first two were great books and I'll get back to the third book once I've finished my non-fiction cycle. (I tend to go back and forth lol)

MarceliusK 9mo ago

Even if people read fewer books cover to cover, text still seems to be the medium where ideas actually get nailed down, argued over, and preserved