10 ms·

Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

• a9h74j 5y ago
  > “A restlessness has seized hold of many of us,” wrote the American author Rebecca Solnit, “a sense that we should be doing something else, no matter what we are doing” However, as the article testifies, there is still pleasure (including a calmer intellectual pleasure) to be found in isolation with a book. A useful hypothesis: Loss of attention span (due to an internet focus) can be reversed, and it is worth doing so.
• cosmotic 5y ago
  What does the author think people are doing on the internet? At least some are reading.
  • shankarro 5y ago
    Some are reading with great comprehension rates, most are skimming through content, and up to the..next piece.
    • tshaddox 5y ago
      Are comprehension rates that important when your goal isn’t something serious like education or self-help?
    • DoItToMe81 5y ago
      For me, it was my school's enforced reading and book reports that taught me to skim and just pick up enough info to write a report, and the internet was ultimately what restored my capability to read and attention span, as I could find things that genuinely interested me. Obviously, the internet has changed a lot since I was a kid, but I'm not entirely sure that there's just nobody being exposed to larger amounts of text and that few people online have interests greater than TikTok.
    • resonious 5y ago
      I think this is pretty natural given we live in an information-abundant world now. Taking the time to read everything you could get your hands on makes a lot of sense when you don't have constant access to everything. For me, there are some writings that are really great and some that are a drag. I typically skim to figure out if something is really great. If it looks good after a skim, I'll dig deep. I suspect many others are the same, though there probably are some junkies who never dig deep.
    • ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      How is this different from reading books? Most people are likely not "reading with great comprehension rates" when they read a book either.
      • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        If you read fiction books that way, you're not going to enjoy the book very much. In fact, you likely won't finish it.
  • dang 5y ago
    Since the article seems mostly concerned with book reading, I've added that to the title above. (All: please respond to the substance of an article and not technicalities or provocative bits.)
  • klyrs 5y ago
    Yeah... but if I want to actually read a book, I need to put my phone in another room. It's honestly embarrassing.
    • betwixthewires 5y ago
      I'm the opposite, if I'm staring at my phone for hours on end I'm probably reading a book. I have a respectable library right here in my hands right now. But I do get what you're saying, I've had a problem with dicking around on Reddit before, for a couple of years I spent beyond productive amounts of time on that site.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  • jrmg 5y ago
    At least some are reading. But are we _thinking_? I find that there’s something about reading a book that is more ‘calm’ than reading online. I think it’s the knowledge that switching away from it is a ‘chore’. If I get distracted, I’m likely to look into space and think for a moment, then return to the page, because I can’t just reach for the address bar and start typing.
• dougmwne 5y ago
  An aside, I find it a bit interesting that at some point we stopped talking about internet and game addiction. It used to be a hot topic, but I guess now that we are all completely addicted after decade of intense behavioral experimentation, none of us are interested in reading about it anymore.
  • Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    It was a hot topic because we make hot topics out of the "doom" of [insert new/cool thing here]. We've villified reading, chess, video games, television, dungeon and dragons, driving, dancing, and so on - and vilifying it all goes out of fashion.
  • Nasrudith 5y ago
    It is because people lacked interest in it and ran out of things to say. The conversation was more or less saturated such that it occurs only mostly organically like an author's book coming out or an actual story related to the far dysfunctional outliers who let their kid starve to play more Everquest. Except with smartphones you can always half-ass most functions. The media itself has an attention span of a small child in its pursuit of ratings so they move onto the next emotional source.
  • standardUser 5y ago
    It's like saying we have a driving addiction or a going to work addiction. Not everything can or should be couched in that kind of language. I've always found articles about internet and game addiction to be incredibly myopic, assuming that the "normal" of the 60's or 70's or 80's is somehow universal or worthy of being preserved, and that any deviation from it is an illness.
    • betwixthewires 5y ago
      I understand what you're saying. Still though, you drive to get places or for fun sometimes, some people do it for sport for a living, but you don't find yourself just compulsively driving 8 hours a day. There are people that do find themselves staring at a phone 8 hours a day. The word addiction might be thrown around a little too loosely than it should be, but there's definitely widespread addiction to social media. I find it comparable to couch potatoes that sit down and watch TV all day.
• senortumnus 5y ago
  HN represents a wellspring of deeper reading than is generally afforded by the current entertainment cruft portals of the web - reddit, FB, insta, USA today, financial times, etc etc down to the SEO hellholes of recipe sites, youtube product placement; you get the idea. Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. And I don't think I'm alone in always keeping an eye out for the next serious hub of real reading material! That said I don't read nearly as many books as I did in high school. Books are wonderful things and can be a portal to a novel frame of mind. But then again my life is much busier these days and there are more demands on my time which are not responsibly ignored... So I cherish HN as a flourishing intellectual community, in easily digestible chunks. A bit like the "periodical" era of newspapers a century or two ago.
  • macrolime 5y ago
    I "read" much more books than when I was a teenager. The difference is that they're all audiobooks that I listen to while I cook or do other housework or during commutes.
  • marto1 5y ago
    > Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. Yes, but incentives are not there. Where incentives are is throwing flack at anything and anyone that is popular(including HN) since they also get clicks by association. So it simply does not matter how far and wide you shout stuff like that will always get created and will on occasion rise to the top.
  • tclancy 5y ago
    But how much of that busier life is real and how much of it is a feeling from being online so much? I usually have a couple hours to myself at night and still wind up doing “Just one more crossword” or checking up on some sports team rather than shutting down.
  • wincy 5y ago
    I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, which isn’t even including my Mac and work laptop which I might browse HN on. I feel sort of lobotomized but most people I know are still way dumber, I’m muddling through my career and not getting negative attention. I’m not even busy. I’m just lost and exist mostly moment to moment, and am lucky enough to have developed enough skill to write code before all this happened to me.
• dabedee 5y ago
  The author argues that focused, deep, and uninterrupted reading is harder to achieve when our brains become addicted to the effects of rewarding stimuli, such as those offered on the internet. My personal experience has been just that. When I want to truly understand & reflect on what I read, I need to actually remove all the distractions (phone, laptop) and force myself to not use those for a while. If I don't pick up a book for a month, the effort required to avoid the temptations becomes higher.
• bambax 5y ago
  Socrates famously hated the written form, not because it was technologically advanced for its time, but because it was "dead": you can't have a conversation with a piece of writing, or ask the author to explain something that's on the page. I disagree (and agree, indirectly, with the OP): deadness is a feature, not a bug. The problem with Internet writing is not just its addictive nature, it's groupthink. It is too much alive. You have to either follow popular opinion, or oppose it vehemently; tangential or orthogonal thinking is almost impossible. Books, because they are not part of an immediate, global conversation where people share opinions and judgements and signal their virtue to one another, are something very different and allow for a very different experience than any written text found online. Maybe books will slowly fade; but I think it's unlikely they would ever completely disappear, as they offer something unique not found anywhere else.
  • cjameskeller 5y ago
    I think a parallel argument to Socrates's could be made for the internet -- it is "alive", but in a much lower-dimensional way than real conversation with people in the world who have bodies and families. Online, everyone is a disembodied psyche -- so much is abstracted ideas, universalized groups and events, unbounded emotion/impulse. Talking with someone in real life almost requires confronting the shared humility and complexity of being a person. Avatars and text do not.
  • camillomiller 5y ago
    Well, the Internet conversation mediated by the concept of engagement wasn’t what Socrates had in mind opposing writing. The value of well constructed and structured dialogue is enormous. If it’s between two people, it’s already quite powerful, then you add complexity by adding an additional voice. We’ve been doing this for millennia, and it works, it’s just not what the internet translated.
  • kashyapc 5y ago
    Incidentally, this morning I finished reading the Socratic dialogue, 'Phaedrus'[1]. At the end of the dialogue (and also in a couple of other dialogues), Socrates makes his famous rebuttal against writing: You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You'd think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it [writing] doesn't know whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father's [the writer's] support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support. - - - What is Socrates' proposed solution, then? A combination of two things: (1) of course, the so-called Socratic method (elenchus in Greek) of refutation, that teases out better hypotheses by "identifying and eliminating contradictions", and (2) the "art of dialectic", i.e. the art of investigating the truth, which Plato makes Socrates use in his later dialogues such as the Republic. I'm sure we don't miss the irony here—we gain many of Socrates' insights, regardless of what we think of them, thanks to Plato's writing. PS: I agree with you on books, modulo this: it's more likely to see pigs flying than to see "books starting to slowly fade away" :-) [1] This English translation (by Nehamas & Woodruff) is excellent: https://www.hackettpublishing.com/philosophy/phaedrus https://www.hackettpublishing.com/philosophy/phaedrus
• chadlavi 5y ago
  Internet is the new boogeyman. TV used to be it. Radio was it one time. Hell, _novels_ were treated this way. The one thing they all have in common is being new behavior patterns that people can worry and kvetch about.
  • themodelplumber 5y ago
    They are radically evolved means of consumption, too. If you go back far enough, even back to single cells, it's all been consumption this whole time. The more modern means help us select for specific types and amounts of energy via stimulation. Which is pretty amazing really. That helps put it into perspective for me. I can watch the stimulation and consumption from the outside, so to speak, and get a helpful picture of what's going on in my life.
  • vkk8 5y ago
    And to some extent, all of the nightmare scenarios from those technologies happened. Over time, those scenarios just became the new normal way of life and we adapted to it. Of course, many have made the case that a lot of our psychological and societal problems have their roots in those technologies just as their opponents originally thought they would have, but, again, this is the new norm now so people mostly don't think about it.
  • chickenpotpie 5y ago
    I agree with you somewhat, but there's something unique about the internet I think is dangerous: there's no clear boundaries of when to stop. Radio stations would stop broadcasting, you reach the end of a book, and tv shows end. But, the internet just keeps going. You can just keep scrolling and clicking through website after website until you die, with very little prompt that it's time to stop.
    • acchow 5y ago
      You go to the next book to read in the same way you click on the next link on the web.
      • 5y ago
• xcambar 5y ago
  Suite timely, a few days ago, I've asked HN about reading habits: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29530981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29530981
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Without facial expressions, it's a problem that its hard to tell how serious someone is being on the internet. So every comment is treated like the persons solemn sworn testimony for which they should be judged not just in the current moment, but forever into the future, and everything they every said in the past is relevant, if need be, to show how bad of a person they've been.
  • aurea 5y ago
    To any future digital archivist reading this line, please know that I smiled while I wrote it.
• rmason 5y ago
  I had the advantage of becoming an adult before the Internet even though I was on it earlier than most people. So I can clearly remember both before and after. While its overwhelmingly beneficial not all of it was good. I've observed that some of my richer friends are limiting their kids screen time. In fact it's becoming almost universal among those who work in tech. Clearly some of them want their kids to become more balanced. It's hilarious to see these kids to be told to leave the house and play with your friends. They don't know what to do! Boomers never had that problem or had to be asked twice. I've got an extremely talented friend who is paying each of his kids to read the classics and write book reports which he reviews. The kids in the beginning did it for the money but there is a sense of pride on what they're learning that their peers are not. Certain books became classics for a reason! My late Mother took us to the library every single week and often checked out and read more books than we did. I naively thought that everyone's parents did the same but I learned that wasn't the case. I think fostering a love of books is one of the greatest gift she gave us.
• 2ion 5y ago
  I jealously preserve my time and habit of reading lots of books because it's a main contrast to digital life. A welcome pause from the distractions of nonlinearity in online media and electronic devices (such as e reading devices). It's relaxing. Physical books are still a favorite pastime.
• rlt 5y ago
  Millennials and especially Gen Z are thought to have higher rates of depression and anxiety than previous generations. I would be very surprised if social media weren’t a factor. Despite making a career in tech I believe some of what we’re doing is very harmful to culture, mental and physical health, the environment, and democracy. At some point I would like to focus on mitigating these problems.
  • Nasrudith 5y ago
    I disagree with tbe self-flagellation Zeitgeist. If we didn't have social media we would still have problems with all of those things. It isn't the well of all sorrows that the Zeitgeist is set on scapegoating it as. It just displaced several of the other ills for more or less no difference. Remember obsessive tabloid celebrity culture and reality TV being big things? Things like news media unironically going "we interupt this story from Iraq for news about Britney Spears being released from jail?".(Ah yes, the same media claiming them going out of business would be terrible for democracy.) The Paris Hilton obsession? Innane instagrammers and the pyramid scheme of posers selling guides to being posers are the same societal sickness more or less, manifesting its symptoms differently with the era. There will always be some innanity that is with us long before. From their obsessive focus from the dress at the court to the beads in Ugg's hair and bones spiked through his club!
  • mFixman 5y ago
    Why could social media be a factor and not video games or movie streaming? You are believing things without evidence and falling at the same old-person moral panic as "video games cause violence" or "D&D causes suicide".
    • Mezzie 5y ago
      Or, you know, any of the 50 billion other things that have changed in the past 20 years. Plus it's questionable how much the issue is social media versus just that some things suck and we don't have the option to put our fingers in our ears and go 'la la la everything is fine' anymore. I used to be deeply depressed and angry over climate change; is social media to blame since that's part of what kept it in my head for so long, or maybe it's just a normal response to be depressed and mourn when you learn a bunch of things are dying? Likewise, 20 years ago I would have been SURPRISED to wake up to news about a school shooting in my state, but now it was just 'yup, we were due.' Tech and social media are definitely entwined with these changes, but I side eye the recent attempts to put all the responsibility on tech. It's shared responsibility in my opinion: Tech and its incentives are a problem, but there's also a lot of social rot that we can't ignore and that does tend to make people unhappy.
• densh 5y ago
  I am surprised nobody brought up “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport. The book explores the idea of the post in more detail and argues for concentrated work (“deep” work) lifestyle that’s devoid of shallow activities such as reading Twitter or Facebook feeds. It heavily affected my view on the harm of addictive and distracted habits. Decreasing shallow activities has improved my ability to focus both for work and for leisure reading.
• cloudengineer94 5y ago
  I have to get into the habit of reading books again, because of the internet I started to just read stuff online because it was just so much easier to keep up to date on things.
• heisenbit 5y ago
  I find the long form linear book format puts me into a calming perceiving mood. It became a much needed method of taking a break at a time when multiple high pressure projects and private stress at the same time were pushing me towards collapse. Internet is fractured and many encounter either directly elicit an emotional response of ask of me some form of judgement. Not helpful when needing to calm down.
• ekianjo 5y ago
  > In short, voracious readers ultimately become critical thinkers. No relationship whatsoever. You develop critical thinking when you are in touch with reality, or when you do stuff, more than spending your time in books.
  • wallacoloo 5y ago
    is it the generalization you take issue with (i.e. the implication that reading of any kind in enough volume can teach critical thinking)? or do you actually take issue with the voracious readers of epistemology/philosophy of science/etc who are explicitly trying to use books as an aid to become more critical thinkers?
    • ekianjo 5y ago
      If anything they got the logic completely wrong. You are more likely to become a voracious reader if you have a propensity for critical thinking and curiosity.
• mark_l_watson 5y ago
  What a great read! I am and author and I just emailed a link to three friends who write and my wife. I guess the summary is just being mindful on how we spend our time, deep thinking rather than shallow reactive thinking, etc. I use a service https://freedom.to https://freedom.to to restrict access to much of the Internet except for specific times. I find this useful as well as the freedom.to podcasts and newsletters - really good material on using technology with purpose.
• joshink1 5y ago
  Dopamine exhaustion from over-stimulation may be a reason for the common “can’t focus” complaints. Dr. Huberman claims that he has treated this with dopamine budgeting, information diet, etc…: https://youtu.be/QmOF0crdyRU https://youtu.be/QmOF0crdyRU
  • pitspotter2 5y ago
    Yes. Dopamine is the mediator of the brain's seeking system, SEEKING being one of the seven emotional drives, according to Jaak Panksepp and Mark Solms. The full list of instinctual emotion systems comprises SEEKING, LUST, PANIC, GRIEF, RAGE, CARING and PLAY. https://www.therapyroute.com/article/what-is-emotion-by-m-solms https://www.therapyroute.com/article/what-is-emotion-by-m-so... Seeking makes a cat play with its prey before eating it. Presumably the exercise of skill and the risk of losing lunch make the overall process more satisfying. What might be the reading equivalent? Something like having to track down one's target book in an elaborate and interesting library, complete with secret rooms and hidden shelves (this being an analogue of the internet). In the process one risks being tempted and distracted by other volumes and other authors...
• mmar 5y ago
  Great read, it has been a while since I subscribed voluntarily to a mailing list.
• ivansavz 5y ago
  I'd like to share two hacks that have made a big difference for me: /1/ black-hole certain websites in /etc/hosts, see here for details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29217297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29217297 /2/ making the computer read books to me using the text-to-speech feature. See here for instructions to setup keyboard shortcut for Mac OS users https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem8qpMmnaBFYOgV32gdMc/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem... and this is the command line version https://gist.github.com/ivanistheone/de3ccb244224d101bb93320fee1cab39 https://gist.github.com/ivanistheone/de3ccb244224d101bb93320... Hack /1/ was useful to get rid of the "new tab > enter distracting site url" urges that I get several times per hour. The error loading the page reminds me of my commitment to seek less superficial distractions and practicing better information hygiene. Disclaimer: it's not easy to stick to this (for god's sake I'm no HN right now!!), but I sometimes get good chunks of disconnected time (several weeks in a row). Hack /2/ has allowed me to read A LOT more books then ever before in my life (like one book per week): I simply open the PDF, select a good chunk of text (like one chapter or something), then listen to the book while doing other things (e.g. exercise, cleanup, or computer tasks with low cognitive requirements).
  • CubsFan1060 5y ago
    For 1, I use Focus: https://heyfocus.com/ https://heyfocus.com/ It used to be much cheaper, but it really helps to stop the surfing urges for a time. Well, not stop them so much as force me to realize when I have them.
    • Void_ 5y ago
      FocusLite (https://focuslite.app https://focuslite.app) has interesting business model - you purchase a consumable ($7.99 I think) to start a streak. If you wanna cancel blocking, you have to delete the app. And once you've done that, you have to purchase the consumable again.
    • BMorearty 5y ago
      SelfControl is a nicely done, free open source program that does the same thing. https://selfcontrolapp.com/ https://selfcontrolapp.com/. Code: https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol/ https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol/
• gregjotau 5y ago
  With regards to blocking sites to concentrate, adding a comment as to why it was blocked in the first place might help. It is something I try now to see how effective it is. My etc/hosts: # This should never be commented out unless my life depends on it. If # We get an article or there is CRITICAL information there it is OK, but # in 99% of cases you will just waste your time on these websites. GO OUTSIDE INSTEAD! 0.0.0.0 dn.no dinside.no nettavisen.no itavisen.no e24.no vg.no www.dn.no nrk.no dagbladet.no https://dn.no https://dn.no https://www.nettavisen.no/ https://www.nettavisen.no/ www.nettavisen.no shifter.no www.shifter.no nettavisen.no nrk.no www.nrk.no # FB might be relevant for work, but ONLY uncomment if you have something CONCRETE to do on the platform. # Delegate to someone else if possible, which can be done in most cases. # TRAIN or GO OUTSIDE instead of wasting time here 127.0.0.1 facebook.com login.facebook.com secure.facebook.com latest.facebook.com inyour.facebook.com beta.facebook.com static.facebook.com touch.facebook.com developers.facebook.com newsroom.fb.com pixel.facebook.com apps.facebook.com graph.facebook.com m.facebook.com upload.facebook.com www.facebook.com https://facebook.com https://facebook.com # LinkedIn should only be used for marketing, DO NOT COMMENT UNLESS YOU HAVE A CONCRETE THING TO DO. # TRAIN or GO OUTSIDE instead of wasting time here. 127.0.0.1 linkedin.com www.linkedin.com https://linkedin.com https://linkedin.com
• richardw 5y ago
  I used to read non-stop. My kindle is now filled with hundreds of books I haven’t read. I don’t generally do New Years resolutions but fixing that seems an excellent candidate. Edit: I’ve just deleted all my standard newsy favourites and moved my Kindle app to where browser usually goes. Browser in same “distractions” folder as Tweetbot.
• aw9f70gae 5y ago
  I was never a reader. I’ve played video games since I was a child, for over twenty years, and social media for almost as long. I wonder how much harder it will be to develop mental patience and critical reasoning as someone who has never known what it’s like to slow down and enjoy the thought process of reading a book. I have never not felt like my mind’s going 100mph
  • jmfldn 5y ago
    It will be hard but by no means impossible. Your brain is trainable in the same way, that your body is when you exercise. I'm by no means unaffected by all this, but being 40+, I experienced my entire pre-adult life without the Web or with a very different form of it at least. I highly recommend making the effort to slow your mind. My brain works best when relaxed, not multitasking / not too many "tabs" open. I find that the best ideas come to me when I'm not even thinking and grinding the cogs of my conscious mind at least. I'm not sure what's going on but when the mind gets quiet, ideas and insights bubble to the surface. I guess the background processing (of which most of the brain is I guess) somehow has a chance to emerge. Apart from this, I find it a much more satisfying state of mind to inhabit. It feels like relaxed contentment, not anxious and dissatisifed grasping at a million things underpinned by FOMO that I need the next bit of info / distraction. Don't get me wrong though, I get days when I fall down the hole of distraction too. I'm just really trying to hang on to what I developed many years ago. These days you have to actively cultivate this, whereas it came more naturally in the past.
  • pm90 5y ago
    Honestly reading is just a skill; like any others you get better at it with time. My intro to reading for fun was via comic books: I got bored really easily reading regular books. The next step was reading Harry Potter series, which I found incredibly immersive and enjoyable. I guess my advice would be to try things you might like rather than what are considered to be important or classics. If there’s something that piques your interest, reading is almost like an adventure, trying to get to the end to know the full story.
• wazoox 5y ago
  I spend way too much time on the internet, listening to a deluge of podcasts and videos at high speed, reading gobs of articles, but I still manage to read 30 books a year. However this overconsumption of information indisputably harms my ability to create in general; I write less content, less code, less drawings, less music than I used to.
  • stinos 5y ago
    Similar story here. Yes I'm addicted to internet, but no that didn't have any effect on how much I read. Probably because of the habit (did this when I was a kid already): I read about an hour, in bed, right before going to sleep, about 8 out of 10 days. Convenient thing is that my SO does the same. Indeed what I spend on internet time is mostly time taken from creative hobbies. On the other hand I was also not super good at those and it bacame boring after a while.
• waylandsmithers 5y ago
  My side project tries to address this! by replacing the habit with a real book. It's a little half baked but personally I've read 20 books this year, which is the most I've ever read as an adult. Won't self promote beyond that but the link is in my profile.
• chernevik 5y ago
  The Internet is quite new, smartphones are newer still. We're still working out appropriate usage, and social norms about such usage. It wouldn't surprise me if, in 2035, looking at your phone in public marks you out as a loser who can't focus on anything. I think the greatest threat to reading is the evolution of our education systems into factories for conformity and indoctrination.
• htor 5y ago
  TL;DR
• bulochka 5y ago
  I dont understand this anti-digital-books attitude honestly. The books themselves are just paper. What really matters is their content. And everyone can read the same content on their phone. Having this in mind, how is reading an EPUB any worse than reading a hardcover (besides personal preference)?
  • pm90 5y ago
    It isn’t. And it’s pretty amazing: I can read a little bit on my phone when commuting, then continue reading on my iPad before bed (I use Apple Books).
• synergy20 5y ago
  The answer is yes, we're reading much less and the trend will stay. Our brain will adapt and evolve, eventually, our brain is more of a browser to search info quickly, it will offload the deep thinking or memorization gradually to the internet/searchc-engine/metaverse/whatever collectively.
• hackermeows 5y ago
  Why is it bad though . I don’t have hours to spend reading a book. Did they not say the same thing when TVs initially came out ? Seems like just another “back in the good old days” post .
• int_19h 5y ago
  FWIW, the Internet and modern electronic gadgets are the best thing that happened to me when it comes to reading more. My reading list is now long enough to last me a year (and keeps growing), and I can just whip my phone out and read whenever I'm waiting for something.
• Natsu 5y ago
  I mean, yes, I mostly read things online nowadays, but... I'm still reading, it's just on the computer now.
  • gromitss 5y ago
    It’s probably shorter material and from many disparate subjects in a short time?
  • questiondev 5y ago
    this is what i was thinking, i think it depends on the demographic but overall i heard that reading rates are way higher now due to the internet’s text content. granted reading books are great but i mostly read those online as well or audiobooks in the car
    • moffkalast 5y ago
      I don't think audiobooks are in the reading category, that's more like you know, listening.
  • bmitc 5y ago
    Long form things? The longest things I read on the Internet are articles, blog posts, and papers, which are all at most 30 pages.
    • Natsu 5y ago
      I'm reading webnovels, including some incredibly long ones that span thousands of chapters, so it's not just listicles or whatever.
    • silisili 5y ago
      If I'm blunt, I rarely read long form things. I've found that most long form things are filler. If you make a movie, people expect 2 hours. If you make a book, people expect 200 pages. Both are generally full of a big amount of filler to meet said metrics.
• lurquer 5y ago
  [flagged]
• EamonnMR 5y ago
  I strongly suspect that video as a medium (especially video social media, but also including TV) has been eating literacy (including text forums) for a while and will continue until we can program our video social media apps by talking and gesturing.
• russellbeattie 5y ago
  I have definitely replaced my book reading with the web. But I did that at least a decade ago. I still "read" a lot of books and novels, I'm just listening to the audio version now. Not as good for recall, I will readily admit, but on the other hand it does let you re-listen again with almost equal enjoyment. I've replaced all television watching - except for live sports and news - with YouTube. All movies are now watched at home. Information consumption habits change as the media does. "Reader's Digest", among other magazines, used to be required reading for any well-read person and now it basically doesn't exist. I assume this trend will continue apace.
• SavantIdiot 5y ago
  "e-mail address was for professors what the cellular phone was for their students: a sign that they were ahead of the game." What tech flair these days makes you look "Ahead of the game?". For me it's either: (a) using an MCU for a substantial project that isn't an Raspberry PI or Arduino (hello STM or NXP). (b) a github repo that proves I know how to use Jest, Nuxt, ESLint, Grunt, Gradle, Gulp, or some combination of the latest CI/CD/UI frameworks. (c) being followed on twitter by someone famous.
  • knaik94 5y ago
    I think how many stars a github repo that you created or are a major contributor of is an interesting tech flair these days. Being a early/top adopter/contributor on places like stack exchange and reddit is good too. It's probably easier to tell in hindsight.
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  I actually read more books now. I download them and load them up on my phone and read them like crazy. Also discussions on sites like this have expanded my articulation and understanding of many concepts and topics. I spent a lot of time, years, dedicating a significant potion of my life to reading educational material of all sorts. I don't know if I use the internet differently, maybe, I don't use Facebook or twitter or tiktok or any of that. We forget the access to information we have, it would be unimaginable 30 years ago. I can delve into literally any topic I want as deep as I want to go, I can read any book I want right now, for free if I were so inclined.
  • boppo1 5y ago
    What apps do you use for books?
  • Zircom 5y ago
    I bought a Kindle and that was nice, but I'm terrible at remembering to bring it with me when I leave the house, and the (admittedly small) effort of having to connect it to my computer to load epubs onto it is enough friction to stop me from doing it in the first place a lot of the time. I usually obtain them from less than legal sources and buy a hardcopy if I like it. For awhile I was buying ebooks straight from the Kindle store on the device itself but something about paying the same price for a file as a hardcopy left a bad taste in my mouth. I'd rather have something to put on my shelf and I can loan to friends. Plus paying for the book up front is a bit of a risk if it sucks, because I can't return it or resell it or even give it away to someone else. The past few months I've just been loading the books straight to my phone and I've read more new books in the last 3 months than I have in the last 3 years. Definitely a game changer.
    • aero-glide2 5y ago
      Last time I used a Kindle, you could just email a book to your Kindle email address and then the book would appear in the library. Much easier than physically connecting to copy books.
      • 5y ago
• f0e4c2f7 5y ago
  Counterpoint: With the right perspective the internet is the ultimate medium for books (ebooks and audiobooks) and it's easier to read hundreds or thousands of books than it has ever been in history.
  • shankarro 5y ago
    In terms of accessibility and ease of finding your next read,yes I would agree with that. But, the culture of Goodreads et al. would make you do you reading like people do everything else nowadays to "show off" (i.e. share it) with your "friends" so they too know how many book you can handle per year. That's why I hate Goodreads for instance.
• tomerbd 5y ago
  Wait until you get a smartphone and install Whatsapp then the real fun begins
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• knaik94 5y ago
  I strongly dislike the continued push to categorize bad habits using technology as an addiction. Addiction is not a description of a behavior that you think is bad and wish to change. Addiction is life damaging compulsive action that you wish you could control but can't due to psychological and sometimes physical dependence. If you are using technology as a means of escapism and it becomes a detriment to your health, for example you start struggling with person hygiene, you delay or miss appointments or meetings, you forgo or isolate yourself from your social support, and you see the negative effects of choosing technology and yet don't change your actions, then it can be considered an addiction. Getting distracted while reading the paper edition of a book and googling something isn't an addiction or "withdrawal effects", it means you find that book boring. The reason I, and I imagine many others enjoy, reading digitally is because of two main reasons. One is the sheer abundance of new reading materials I will find interesting. I no longer feel an urge to spend my time and energy on writing that's obtuse as a way of considering myself enlightened for having finished reading it. I value my time differently because of choices technology presents me with. The second reason I prefer reading digitally is the accessibility of the discussion and conversations around whatever I'm reading. It's easier to create and engage with others regarding a piece of writing thanks to technology. Sometimes I wonder if people, like the author, who decide to forgo the use of internet during reading use it positively, the way I do. Any word or phrase I don't understand can be instantly looked up. I can learn the context about the setting an author uses, like looking up pictures of certain types of geography. The biggest thing that I think the people who decide to go paper only miss out on is the novel ways in which writing is evolving. Fanfiction and independent publishing is a lot easier when it is digital only. Textbooks are becoming better at incorporating web technologies, for example I'm learning a new programming language and the ability to test and run exercises at the end of each section is so helpful in keeping me engaged. There are digital choose your own adventure stories and visual novel games that immerse me in a way no book ever will. The simple ability to copy and paste is groundbreaking when I want to interact with the text. Many of the downsides the author lists as negatives of digital reading seems to actually be regarding people skimming instead of intentional reading. I would argue that this has more to do with people being conditioned to no longer waste time and poorly written articles that are 90% fluff and 10% content. The biggest problem for me has been the current state of local news articles. A single story reworded and posted multiple times by different news agencies in order to generate content and keep people engaged on their site. I'm not sure if clickbait news articles are gone or if I just have gotten better at filtering them out. But it's necessary to try to read because the old mediums of news delivery are dying. Why wait for the familiar well spoken news anchor to tell you the most important events of the day over the radio or tv when you can look up the details yourself online? Twitter is one of the most current ways to stay updated on a story because people report live. The world has become a place where using the internet to stay up to date and read is necessary. People have adapted to having a constant stream of information that can keep them occupied. Most people aren't clinically addicted to the internet, people just don't want to miss information that feels important at the time it's released. I love my ereader. Books aren't going anywhere. The romantic experience of what past generations defined as reading is disappearing. Some people have a harder time adapting to that truth. Reading to me has never been about the paper, the tangibility, or the fact that you don't need electricity. The most important thing about reading, to me, has been accessibility. I have read an entire harry potter books on an ipod touch, bored in class, while in high school. I do not consider myself a poor student and neither did my teachers. I enjoyed the story just as much as everyone else. I appreciate some people value the concept of physical books more than I do. The doesn't change the fact that the value of writing comes from the ability to convey ideas to another, the medium is an afterthought.
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• farrarstan 5y ago
  lol at foregrounding Franzen as your main guy to hang your piece on. Just…
• jquery 5y ago
  I read more books than ever these days. It’s so convenient to be able to carry my entire library on my iPad.
  • BooneJS 5y ago
    Is this a "in case I switch books", or a "in case I have to look something up" convenience?
    • jquery 5y ago
      In case I switch books, mainly, although it is convenient to be able to share a passage from a book sometimes.
• blockwriter 5y ago
  The present state of reading and the internet is another example of the familiar tension that a healthy diet and processed foods demonstrate. Those that still read and write are like those that jogged, abstained from smoking, and ate balanced meals in the seventies. There is an intrinsic good to reading, one that readers have an intuition for, and that good merely needs to be discovered again by the culture and made explicit. No few of us are lost to the negative effects of internet, just like no few people simply will not overcome their reliance on sweets. We do go on, but leave the kind of material in our wake that the likes of the Johns Stewart and Oliver can use to make their living.
• selfhifive 5y ago
  No it isn't. I check HN every three hours and manage to finish a book every two to three days. (On vacation from college)
• hardwaregeek 5y ago
  I'm not in the whole anti-Internet camp, indeed my viewpoint is far closer to Randall Munroe's[1]. But it is a little sad how few of my peers read books. I just finished three volumes of the Robert Caro series on Lyndon Johnson along with The Power Broker. Now, granted, these are big tomes. They also cover a topic that most people would not find interesting. Yet I still find it very depressing how almost all of my peers balk at the idea of reading them. Part of the reason they balk is, yes, the length and topic, but also because reading has become such a chore, such an unusual event, that the idea of reading a 800 page book is akin to running a marathon. If you struggle to read a 200 page book, an 800 page book appears impossible. And yet, inside these books, there is absolutely multitudes. There's more insight and political knowledge and facts than thousands of blog posts and news articles, aided by thorough, comprehensive decades-long research. There's also pure pleasure. The writing quality is so far and above the pedestrian prose that you see on the internet. It's like eating your first bite of top notch sushi after years of cold supermarket stuff. I can't tell you how emotional I got reading about the Civil Rights movement, about the trial of Emmett Till, about Coke Stevenson[2], about the Rural Electrification movement. There's no blog or article that compares. [1]: https://xkcd.com/1414/ https://xkcd.com/1414/ [2]: Even if that portrayal is considered to be suspect. Although if you ask me, I think the rebuttal of "but Stevenson was a virulent racist" ignores the fact that everybody, LBJ included, was a virulent racist at the time and to tar Stevenson with that brush is to apply modern sensibilities to a different era.
  • 123anonanonanon 5y ago
    I’ve read The Power Broker. But to be honest, I don’t remember much.
  • wallacoloo 5y ago
    the quality of any body of work is incredibly subjective. take a look at any best-sellers list and pick a random book off it: chances are (if you're like me) that you'll think it was a waste of time after having read it. so then how do you find good content? 1) have friends with common tastes, and consult them. this becomes difficult if you're a millennial surrounded by peers who don't read. 2) find short-form blogs for which the sunk cost in deciding if you like them and want to follow them is low; expand into adjacent blogs & writers. blogs don't link to each other quite like they did in the past (e.g. webrings), so this almost always puts you back into some form of social media for the aggregation (reddit), and those aggregators quite often degrade/drift over time. 3) follow the algorithm. the only platform i've found that's semi-decent at introducing me to new, quality, creators is YouTube (or TikTok, but that's a substantially different genre). books are cool, but if any of the above tracks with you, the barrier to entry is actually a lot more substantial than the other forms of media we're accustomed to (tv shows, video games, etc). writers shoot themselves in the foot by writing massive tomes that take 800 pages to say what could have been better communicated in 200. introductions are the epitome of authors totally losing track of what the value they provide is -- and yet new authors still include them freakishly often.
• mrslave 5y ago
  > In an essay he published in The Guardian (which is by now removed from their website, following a massive Twitter campaign against the novelist mainly because of his opinion on techno-consumerism), titled “What’s Wrong with the Modern World?”, American novelist Jonathan Franzen wrote: For the curious, the removed article is here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/13/jonathan-franzen-wrong-modern-world https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/13/jonathan-franz... and archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20130915070641/http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/13/jonathan-franzen-wrong-modern-world https://web.archive.org/web/20130915070641/http://www.thegua...
  • a_bonobo 5y ago
    Is there any source as to why it was removed? The OP says it was because of a 'massive Twitter campaign' but I can't find no source on that. I can only find some lukewarm Reddit discussion, it seems to just be a bad essay? https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1mcuva/jonathan_franzen_whats_wrong_with_the_modern/ https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1mcuva/jonathan_fran... or see this review https://observer.com/2013/10/bigmouth-strikes-again-what-in-the-modern-world-is-wrong-with-jonathan-franzen/ https://observer.com/2013/10/bigmouth-strikes-again-what-in-...
    • dnsco 5y ago
      This piece argues he was an early symbol/scapegoat in the conversation around equity in the literary world. I found it to be pretty sympathetic and enjoyable. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/22691692/jonathan-franzen-controversy-crossroads-oprah-franzenfreude https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/22691692/jonathan-f...
• Brajeshwar 5y ago
  If one wants to read more and willing to try few ideas, here are few that works for me and our family. - Have physical books always around — at your desk, bookshelf, bedside table, etc. My current ratio is roughly 1:4 of physical against Kindle. - Read multiple books at a time. - If you get bored, don’t feel like finishing a book; let it go. May be you can come back to it later. - Always try to carry your Kindle or other readers with you on your Uber/Lift/Ola rides, Train/Metro/Planes, etc. - Or buy at-least one copy at the start of your flight, and try books that you can finish off in that leg of the flight. Personally, I try to give it to a random stranger on the way out, “It was a good/awesome book. I have finished reading it, please go ahead and read it.” - I don’t care who read my blog but I try to publish/write few lines about the books I read on my blog. Have been doing it for a few years now. ## Kids Rule; - There is no limit to how much books (digital or physical) my daughter can ask me to buy as long as she finish reading the last one. - If she can't or don’t want to finish the last book, wait for one week to pass. - She gets ₹100 for every book she finishes regardless of genres but ₹500 for any non-fiction documentary-ish like a biography of a great person. Of course, there is nothing entertaining/social on my phone.
  • batman-farts 5y ago
    Reading multiple books at a time has been a big one for me. When I was younger, this concept didn’t even enter my mind… I had one book I was reading right now, and I wouldn’t pick up another until that one was done. But I feel like having multiple books “in flight” is crucial for comprehending denser topics. I might only be able to get through one chapter a night of a particularly dense book (right now, for me, Understanding Media by McLuhan), but I can still burn through a sci-fi novel or a light biography in a few days at most.
  • wallacoloo 5y ago
    adding to this: if your issue is one of focus, try a pomodoro timer. it's a great way to shut off that voice nagging you about all the other things you need to remember to do, because you can forget about all of those and know that in 25 minutes you'll have an opportunity to reconsider them. if you're really strict with your time management, another approach is to use detailed calendars, but that's a lot more work than just a simple timer.
• camillomiller 5y ago
  > “Isn’t the essence of the Apple product that you achieve coolness simply by virtue of owning it? It doesn’t even matter what you’re creating on your Mac Air. Simply using a Mac Air, experiencing the elegant design of its hardware and software, is a pleasure in itself, like walking down a street in Paris. Whereas, when you’re working on some clunky, utilitarian PC, the only thing to enjoy is the quality of your work itself.” Whoever writes this lacks knowledge of the world, and yet decides to express an opinion on it. The fact that it’s a celebrated author like Franzen, makes it even worse. A “Mac Air” is a wondrous machine. It’s so good that it makes you FORGET about the machine so much better than a clunky PC. So, if anything, the opposite of what Franzen write is actually true.
• jdavis703 5y ago
  I find I get my best reading done or can bang out an unusually amount code while I’m on a long flight or passenger rail (Amtrak) without fast, stable internet. I would love if someone opens up a no-internet cafe. And you can pay an optional, arbitrary “deposit” where if you leave early you get charged whatever amount you deposited.
• bobiny 5y ago
  I read less books than when I was school age. I have a couple that are sitting in Books app that I read a few pages at a time. I think the “problem” is twofold: 1) phones are too much 2) too many books 1: using a book used to be easier than computer. You had to turn it on, wait, sit in a chair. With book it’s just grab and start reading in any position. People were/are reading standing up in Moscow metro. Computer was also limited in what you can do with it: I had a few games, a few programms and if I wanted more, it’s either going to a store for CD or using a slow Dial-up (check if no one is talking on the phone or expecting a call). With smartphone now there is Youtube, games and a ton of text that talks back to you (like HN or Twitter). 2: I find that many books and movies just say too much. I went out of the movie theater from Hellboy reboot when they started explaining the lore right away. I don’t mind a bit of exposition, but a film is not the right medium imo. Similarly with books: I feel like at least some of them could be a series of Substack posts if not Twitter threads. So I agree that books are dying out a bit, but I’m optimistic that they are being replaced with mediums more suitable for the message. Also I hope there will be more specialized gadgets like ReMarkable tabled that you can’t do everything with.
  • estaseuropano 5y ago
    I find your point 2 very odd on both counts. First, I would find it pretty surreal to walk out of a movie theater because of 1-2 minutes of exposition. You literally spend more time walking from the booth to your seat or watch advertisements before the movie starts then the few noments of on boarding for those that don't know the universe. Second, there are literally millions of books published each year. Yes many are bad fiction or bad nonfiction but there is an incredible wealth of books that use each page well. E.g. I read 'Sex, Power, Suicide' by Nick Lane a few weeks ago and there was not a single page that felt wasted - every page i learned something new. Similar with e.g. Hans Rosling's book. And there is much fiction where each page matters in driving the plot. Tl;dr: choose good books.
    • bobiny 5y ago
      I thought Hellboy was a bad movie, because it’s more tell than show. I think voiceover is appropriate in special cases like Dexter’s inner monologue, because it shows separation of his public and private persona. I wouldn’t mind exposition scene at some point if it fits in the story, like for example someone telling a bedtime tale.
• allendoerfer 5y ago
  Only having read some of the comments - which btw. are often the best part of a HN submission. It is not like we are only getting the fluffy part, just because we are trained to go for the meat, when authors often had to literate a whole backstory before getting to the point. This ability is what makes a great information worker like a developer. So despite only having read some of the comments and finding it hard to start reading a book, I have no problem to keep my focus on difficult professional problems for very long hours (>10). So I don’t think it is attention span in general. Might be just your mind being trained for things you value.
• zeristor 5y ago
  “ In an essay he published in The Guardian (which is by now removed from their website, following a massive Twitter campaign against the novelist mainly because of his opinion on techno-consumerism), titled “What’s Wrong with the Modern World?” ” https://archive.md/85tep https://archive.md/85tep Just wanted to use the archive.md site the way it was intended rather than circumventing the jaws of cookies.
  • 0898 5y ago
    Why was it controversial?
• jcun4128 5y ago
  I used to read a lot of books but now it is hard. Sometimes I can get into something and the pages fly. Often though I space out, my eyes move but I don't read the words, it's not great.
  • mdp2021 5y ago
    It takes discipline to return to active reading, to re-acquire the proficiency in automated reading. > my eyes move but I don't read the words That's also an understandable consequence of having become information scavengers, used to spend time trying to retrieve the important signal in the mass of noise. The information available in the formation years of many was structured in the essays ("careful pace") and breathing in the narrative ("flow and occasionally pick") - today facing "informational landfills" is much more common (this included, e.g., newspaper titles, with few exceptions). One should probably consciously scavenge the more loose texts, and return to a punctual reading of the more structured and reliable texts, after evaluating what kind of text one has in front - to use the type of reading that is appropriate.
• aurea 5y ago
  Having failed to truly "disconnect" in the past, my recommendation in order not to be distracted by the internet is to first and foremost write down everything that you would have the urge to google. Instead of googling it, put it on paper, and continue your activity. Once you are done you can review the points that you have wrote down, and think whether they are really worth pursuing. And if they are: stop right there! Don't google it. Think about how you could get this information without the internet. This process has helped me rediscover atlases, dictionaries, and many other forms of offline knowledge. I almost see it as a form of survivalism: asking yourself how would you learn without electricity? Of course there will be failures, either due to loss of focus, or maybe because of perceived boredom. But if one sticks with it, it really does become a good habit.
  • rmbyrro 5y ago
    The first part makes sense. Not to distract and interrupt a productive activity. But the second part just seems pointless improductivity, doesn't it? I mean, to counter lack of exercises due to excessive use of cars, you would at times avoid it. But not every time, when you really can benefit from its speed, safety and comfort.
    • aurea 5y ago
      I see the fact that searching for the information without the internet (or electricity in general) is more difficult as a filter to select what is relevant and discard the noise. In these cases I simply accept that I need to pick what I want to focus on. But I am in no way advocating for a 100% electricity free lifestyle, nor am I saying that one should ditch all modern technology. Something that I do are offline days [1] during which I try to apply what I wrote about here. On other days it will depend on the urgency of the task itself. You can of course also apply only the first part (noting down things to search later). Whatever works for you ultimately. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/OfflineDay/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OfflineDay/
• ggfgg 5y ago
  An alternative perspective. The reason we don’t find them engaging and are so easily distracted is because they’re not very good and we didn’t have anything to compare them with until recently. This includes classics as declared by some entirely subjective arbitrary literary authority. It’s no different to wine tasting; status is more important than enjoying the thing. Practicers of Tsundoku are a fine example of the propagandists pushing the literary agenda forwards when in reality they read 5% of every book and are too ashamed to throw it in the paper recycling where it belongs and mistake the physical presence of the book as the value of the words. For me, peak book-reading was the 80s and involved dragging myself through the local library because the other option was smoking, lurking around in public parks drinking or being a petty criminal. There are better things to do now, like complain about this on HN. There are also far more interactive communication pursuits these days and better story telling mechanisms. I do still read books. I think I knocked about 15 on the head this year, mostly Pratchett and The Expanse series. But it’s on a Kindle, it’s not a magical romantic experience and I tend to read while pooping, waiting for someone to do the shopping, when picking the kids up from school or stuck on a really long Zoom meeting which I don’t need to speak during. One notable disaster book this year was The Complete Navigation Manual. I am attempting to relearn map/compass based navigation again after a 25 year hiatus. This entire book could have been condensed down into a single markdown file in github that I could have read and understood the key points in 30 minutes. Such low information density is not something I am used to or like.
• Paul_S 5y ago
  While the article veers a bit all over the place at its core it's about a topic I have given a lot of thought to - relationship between information form and content and our expectations. I still read books but I'm very against fetishising them. I don't understand the emotional connection with paper, typewriters and the general attitude that medium destroys the content. What I think happens a lot is the old correlation vs causation mistake. Let me illustrate with an anecdote. When I was beginning woodworking I discovered a lot of educational youtube channels which I thought were great. At the same time I bought a lot of books. A couple of years later I realised that those youtube channels were mostly worthless but I still use those books to this day. The paradox is that it should be obvious that video is a much better medium to teach you woodworking. Unfortunately, due to factors outside of those dictated by form, it so happens that books are better, even though they are limited by their form. Sometimes I think it's self reinforcing by people producing to the expectations of the platform - so the real limitation is not the form but the customer's expectation. People quickly create mental shortcuts and hence the cargo cult of paper. I reject it. I often find that after reading a history book I learn and am entertained more by reading a few wikipedia articles on the subject. Paper is no guarantee of quality, and modern form is not the limit (modern form has in fact fewer limits than paper).
  • DarylZero 5y ago
    > Unfortunately, due to factors outside of those dictated by form, it so happens that books are better, even though they are limited by their form. I think you've got this backwards: it's the "form" that dictates youtube videos must always target the lowest common denominator, target absolute beginners, use clickbait approaches to topic selection, and spread content thin to increase number of videos. (The "form" not being merely video, though, but the overall platform: the feed algorithm, the userbase, the thumbnail popups, etc.)
    • Paul_S 5y ago
      I didn't think of the form as "YouTube video", but you make a good argument. I divided it into the form "video" and expectations of the audience "youtube". Now I see it was arbitrary. Instead I should've thought of the distinction between technical limits of the form and non technical.
• mountainb 5y ago
  The way to cure this is to develop a habit that severely limits undirected online browsing and socializing. Part of it is just an education of your own aesthetic sentiments. I read James Clear's "Atomic Habits" (not that this is a special book, I was just on another kick in which I really needed to improve my productivity and picked up a suggestion to use a physical counter of some kind to make a habit stick. I bought a bunch of marbles, and for every bloc of time that I avoid undirected browsing or social media use, I move a marble from one container to the other. My goal every day is to get through an arbitrary number of marbles (160 right now), after which I can do whatever. If I slip up and open a social media page, HN, or start browsing newspapers, I dump all the marbles out of the container, which generally makes it impossible to meet the day's goal unless the slipup is very early in the day. This has been nothing short of amazing for my life. One issue that I had is I had a physical twitch that would start developing after a couple minutes doing one thing, like a work project, at which I would feel the urge to check the news or social media. This twinge would show up and I would type into a browser window to relieve the sensation. Instead I more or less replaced that twinge with moving the marble from one container to the other. It's made it a lot easier to focus. Over time, I stopped caring as much about the news and became more easily satisfied by very briefly reading summaries every few days. I think a lot of web addiction is less driven by thoughts or brain issues and more by physical habits akin to nail-biting or cuticle-picking. Most of the attempts that I've made to stop addictive behavior have not worked: they were based on schedules, timers, articulated goals, and other things like that rather than recognizing the physical trigger for the habit, the result of that trigger, and just redirecting the stimulus with another physical action rather than trying to suppress it.
  • nefitty 5y ago
    I am able to achieve this by supplementing with the amino acid precursor N-acetyl cysteine. I've done the container goal with paper clips, have used pomodoros, full-time accounting, to-do lists, commitment devices, aversion stimulus, and on and on. I don't use any hacks or techniques any more.
    • mleonhard 5y ago
      How much N-acetyl cysteine do you take and how often? How long have you used it and have you changed your dose or usage over time?
• jimmyvalmer 5y ago
  The article quotes W. Zinsser: But I do know they [technological advances] won’t make writing twice as good. So wrong! There's no question Google has improved my writing, enabling "google-fu" which dials in the precise historical reference or literary turn-of-phrase I'm looking for.
  • Mezzie 5y ago
    Or research for fiction writers. It's SO MUCH easier to write decent fiction now.
• Exendroinient 5y ago
  The worrying thing is that mainstream social medias are stopping reading as a form of the content consumption. Videos are becoming shorter and more condensed. It will end badly for brains of the generation raised on tiktok.
• seaman1921 5y ago
  Very productive discussion here with lots of tips shared here. I am grateful that HN is one of the places which still feel worth the time spent. I would like to share my own thoughts as well.. Personally, my weakness is video-games and I have lost the ability to stop playing once I start. Gaming sessions usually last for hours and hours until I feel satisfied (Doesn't matter whether I am winning or losing). I tried several strategies for self-control but none worked out, so I have taken extreme measures to completely stay away from gaming. - I have deleted my steam and similar profiles (they don't make this easy) - I do not own a mouse anymore (switched to a trackpad completely) - If I really feel the need, I just watch a gaming-stream on twitch/highlights on youtube - I would like to phase this out as well, but have not found an effective strategy to do so yet, since blocking these websites is not a reasonable option. Finally, about reading, I have been doing more of it lately, but I usually read research-papers related to my work and some popular self-improvement books. What really helped me is purchasing a kindle - it offers a free feature to convert PDFs to kindle format - which doesn't work so well with research papers with lots of images and charts but otherwise really helpful.
  • BrianOnHN 5y ago
    We haven't scrutinized video games enough after the "video games cause violence" myth was debunked. Hands down the biggest addiction among my friends in their late 20s and early 30s. The problem is that none of them see it that way. They take breaks from "known" addictions (alcohol, cannabis) repeatedly, only to still fail to reach their goals, without ever acknowledging the gaming issue.
    • emptyparadise 5y ago
      Doesn't help that every product is trying to be as addictive as possible these days. All the psychological devastation of hard drugs and none of the euphoria.
    • pm90 5y ago
      What kind of goals is it preventing them from reaching?
• moffkalast 5y ago
  > I sometimes wonder what will happen if the internet gets suddenly shut down worldwide? Will hundreds of millions of internet addicts go down the streets protesting, and possibly overthrowing their governments? That is downright laughable. So much hinges on the internet these days that society would literally grind to a halt even without considering anything non-essential. Databases offline, communications down, supply chains gone in an instant. Most businesses would be bankrupt within a week not being able to access their CRM, or emails, or you know... bank accounts. People would be too busy dying to protest. But sure some teenagers with a mild psychological addiction to browsing tiktok or whatever would be upset! Self centered writers with jobs that entail scribbling down fiction on a piece of paper seem to easily forget what are considered essential utilities in this world these days and how fragile is the house of cards we've built.
  • a_bonobo 5y ago
    If you can, give Tim Maughan’s Infinite Detail a try. It's SF on what would happen if the Internet disappears, and goes quite deeply into collapsing supply chains.
    • kingcharles 5y ago
      Wait, that's a book? With like pages? And words? That I have to read?
  • yholio 5y ago
    That sounds like a wild exaggeration. The internet is a fast communication tool but most critical communication tasks can still be performed by telephone, mail, courier etc. All of the physical production and transport infrastructure is still there, people are smart and resourceful and will quickly route around the failed part of the infrastructure, albeit with degraded performance. You might not hear from your grandmother for a while, but the John Deere company will immediately cough up their root "internet only" master key when the army show up at their door demanding those tractors work for national security. A company might go bankrupt by way of CRM crash today, when every competitor has a working CRM. If their activity becomes critical for keeping a large part of the population alive, then silly things like investor and management decisions, accounting law, employee freedom to not come into work etc. go out the window. Money is ultimately just a symbolic representation of work and value, in a crisis they can be completely ignored for a limited time.
• jmacd 5y ago
  I relate completely with the comments here. I have only recently even managed to finish reading a couple of books, but it took me months. I would really like to blame how busy I am (new startup, 3 kids, other commitments), however I see my wife who is a physician who works in 2 departments and also teaches and runs a residency program and I know she is quantitatively much busier than I am and has far less control over her time. However, she manages to read a couple of books a month at least. I think that during the 2000s/2010s when I was sucking in a firehose of information and learning to consume exclusively in places like HN, she was still researching, studying and learning through long form papers, textbooks and experiments. Our brains are trained on very different cadences. So when she sits down to read, there is almost no distraction, her comprehension is far better than mine, and she sort of shoots through a chapter with much better momentum than me. I've recently resolved to stop trying to read anything popular/trendy that I might be attracted to just because it's there and instead only read history, which is my real interest. No more business books or novels I don't really enjoy. That has made a difference and it's already becoming much easier as I am more disciplined about it.
  • hiq 5y ago
    > Our brains are trained on very different cadences. I think this is a very interesting concept. If you're used to quickly finding out which information is relevant or not for you (e.g. from technical docs, emails, etc.), going back to reading a book from cover to cover is a completely different approach from what you're used to. In this case, would it be easier to try to read books just like you usually read, possibly in a non-linear order, starting with what seems to be more important? I know too many people who seem to struggle with reading, simply because they have this idea ingrained in them that they have to read the whole book, from the first page to the end. Even if you're a good reader, it's not clear you want to read a book like this when it's still of unknown quality to you. See also: the levels of reading mentioned in How to Read a Book[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book
• fma 5y ago
  Decent comments and recommendations. I've started to purchase more physical books. But I have the same problem as when I purchase kindle books - they sit there. When I get the chance to read a book and get in, I find that I forget the content. In general I don't have a great memory, anyways. Even when I code, I generally can't tell you where a file is. I think through all the logical steps, from front to back to reach where I need to go. Nowadays with a young daughter that I need to drive to extracurricular activities (2x a week) it gives me 1 hour to sit in the car by myself...half of which I am able to get some reading done (the other half, on social media of course :( ). The funny thing is the last book I read, I was able to complete it because I thought it was longer than it actually is (it had a huge appendix). I have a tendency to finish things to 90%...
  • fma 5y ago
    Oh I'll also say...one trick I've done sometimes is to read using the kindle app or if it's a PDF, xodo...where I can highlight. I treat it almost like I'm reading a website.
• geniium 5y ago
  I’d really like to add that the most important thing is blocked by focus bot and redacted
• bogomipz 5y ago
  The author states: >'In an essay he published in The Guardian (which is by now removed from their website, following a massive Twitter campaign against the novelist mainly because of his opinion on techno-consumerism), titled “What’s Wrong with the Modern World?”,...' I'm having trouble believing The Guardian would remove an article by a well-known author because of a Twitter campaign. However it does in fact appear to no longer exist on their site at least as far as having google search guradian.com. It's here in case anyone is interested: https://web.archive.org/web/20130915070641/http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/13/jonathan-franzen-wrong-modern-world https://web.archive.org/web/20130915070641/http://www.thegua... And for a critique from the same time. This Observer article had some amusing points: https://observer.com/2013/10/bigmouth-strikes-again-what-in-the-modern-world-is-wrong-with-jonathan-franzen/ https://observer.com/2013/10/bigmouth-strikes-again-what-in-...
• asn1parse 5y ago
  what if i have a book addiction? should i then use the internet?
• Arisaka1 5y ago
  All I have to offer is nothing more than personal anecdotes. I think there is a "habitual framework of the mind" that we condition ourselves to operate, and that it's a side-effect of the ways we consume information on a daily basis. Now we simply want to learn about what big event happened moments after it happened. We want to be entertained in our free time and there's a surplus of ways to achieve it, to the point where we can even desensitize ourselves by chasing more triggers than before. Another opinionated and not so scientific book about this subject is "the shallows what the internet is doing to our brains". Last but not least, I don't believe that this is simply a matter of aging. Correlation does not imply causation. It takes time for the mind to get into this state but I don't think it's just the passing of time that causes it, but also what you're doing with. A sufficiently accurate metaphor would be that of the person who exercises daily to maintain a level of fitness that's deemed "very good" for their age. I'm ashamed to admit that my grandfather would easily fall in this category. My grandparents lived far away from town and they worked in the fields, biking etc. daily. As a result my grandfather could easily kick the lights out of me if he wanted to. That's how much of a chair slug I am. And just like there can be a wide discrepancy of physical strength that correlates with habits and activities, so can it happen for mental strength or parts of which in our case is concentration, information recalling and memorizing new things.
• 4monthsaway 5y ago
  I was a voracious reader as a child all the way until I got to university where I had to consume incredibly dense tomes of the most boring subjects known to man. It took me a while to get into the habit of being able to consume 10-15 of those a year. I did it. But it forever killed my thirst to read anything afterward that wasn't consumable within 30 minutes. The great irony of this...I write for a living now.
• themadturk 5y ago
  Games are completely out for me, except for Microsoft Solitaire on my phone for odd moments. I haven't found an immersive game since playing Harpoon in the early Aughts. They require too much time, too much hardware, and give me little return. But I do read a lot, still, thanks to the Kindle. I re-read a lot of beloved books, so having the library on the device or easily available is important. But I also find as I grow older it can be harder to concentrate on things. The TV is on too often in my house, and there's really not a good place to escape from it, and it is much more a distraction than the Internet. Still, I manage to get through between twenty and forty books a year, both new and old.
• thebigspacefuck 5y ago
  “When we track the hours, we become shocked—not at the numbers per see—at what could have been learned, grasped, or done during these wasted hours.“ This is the big thing for me. I easily waste an exercise habit, a social life, and a hobby most days. None of it spent on anything fulfilling. Then it often seems like I’m bored or there’s nothing else to do and I distract myself from the reason why with the reason why.
• maxdo 5y ago
  I've been in the same spot as lots of people here. I started doing some changes. I started to practice meditation, with no guidance and no bs like headspace. Real meditation is exercise on how to focus on what makes you happy and avoid any thoughts in the process. Basically find a focus point to watch, or close eyes , count, if you have a thought - start counting again. I deleted social media. All of them. the only one left is youtube. Even for youtube I have two profiles one for work, where I search only tech related stuff. I still had to curate and spend ~3-4 hours to delete, remove from recommendations everything. I installed app called Lock. That literally block all the apps on the phone for defined amount of time. Meditation + deleting everything makes you rethink of what is really important to you. Every of this new youtubers looking at you offering to watch a new review about Travel, Space, Tesla, Ecology, News , anything you think is interesting. You start see social media producers and their real relationship with YOU in a different way. They eat a lot of your time. Don't Believe ? check screentime. They bring you very little real value. You just watch another stupid episode with mediocre value you barely even able to share with friends to make them interested. They all fight for your attention , once they grab it, they will try to monetize this attention to sell you something. Another side effect of this relationship is separation of interests. Since there are a lot of them, they tend to go into not very crowded topic. While it's good, it creates more and more bubbles you can get into. I like EV's my friend still own an ICE car? Our content will be different. We will be laughing different jokes. And that's happening in hundreds of dimensions. Now ask yourself a question, do you really want to have a relationship, when the best person knows you is algorithms of TikTok/Youtube. Because that's what they created for... This also leads to disconnection from society offering you more and more curated content about your phone brand, car brand, space company, travel style , food, anything you wish. Without a mental model to resist such trend you're done as a fully integrated to society individual.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jrochkind1 5y ago
  I consider myself to have an internet addiction, and it has definitely cut down on my previously extensive book-reading, and I don't like it. > Personally I’d been deprived of access to computers and the internet for several straight months. It was a tough experience—not by choice, but by obligation. Wait, what happened to the author that led to this obligation to not use computers for several months?
• kingcharles 5y ago
  I just got out of jail after 8 years. I managed to read over 800 books during that time. Since I got out I've read zero books and 100,000 pages from HN.