HN Books @HNBooksMonth

> Why change the subject?

Lol actually getting off of vague platitudes is "changing the subject". Right, enjoy your weekend.

> You made a false claim

No I didn't, you either misunderstood what I said or deliberately lied about it to argue a strawman, because that's easier than actually addressing what i'm saying.

> The internet is really much, much less dangerous for your mind than reading ordinary newspapers or watching TV news.

Lol. Truly, you made me laugh out loud. Funny you didn't say "is more accurate" - because that would be an impossible claim. You said "is less dangerous" which is also patently false. This book is the beginning of most study on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

It's unequivocal and damning.

⬐ native_samples

Your claim:

> no one had any issues with a polio vaccine

Reality:

> 40,000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10

There's no misunderstanding or straw man here. You made a false claim whilst accusing others of misinformation. Which seems to be often the way it goes with "misinformation" - not a vague platitude, of course, but the topic of the entire thread.

⬐ fortuna86

I said no one had any objections to it, 20% of the population didn't refuse the polio vaccine and refuse to give it to their kids (which is the topic of discussion, if you need reminding again).

⬐ native_samples

Of course they had objections to it, don't be ridiculous. You think something like that happened and everyone just shrugged and said, hey, no big deal? The reason vaccine companies are immune from legal liability is because after what happened at Cutter Labs there were floods of litigation and a jury found against the vaccine makers, which more or less killed off the vaccine business. From a review of the book:

"Dr. Offit also explores how, as a consequence of the tragedy, one jury's verdict set in motion events that eventually suppressed the production of vaccines already licensed and deterred the development of new vaccines that hold the promise of preventing other fatal diseases"

A big part of what drives vaccine refusal today is awareness that vaccination campaigns have a history of being so dangerous the producers cannot survive in the open market under the normal rules.

Also, the topic of discussion is actually the original article about misinformation and the internet, in general. It was you who insisted on bringing up vaccines in an unrelated thread.

⬐ fortuna86

> Of course they had objections to it, don't be ridiculous.

Not to the point where 20% of the population refused it, which is the point of this discussion. Major news networks didn't run opinion voices lying about the safety and safety and efficacy of the vaccine. Comparing that era to this one is misinformed.

For anybody interested in diving deeper into this subject, I would recommend reading The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. It was written in 2011, but is still very applicable today. Brain plasticity is a real concept and our constant connection to the Internet affects us.

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

⬐ freetonik

Second this recommendation, I enjoyed that book very much. However, I felt defeated by the end, because I couldn't act on the presented information in any meaningful way.

Halfway through the book the author tells about how much he had struggled to write and had to isolate himself from technology for a while, but only temporary. He then came back and felt the "shallows" once again.

⬐ simongray

They did a good follow-up with the author on the Ezra Klein Show podcast a few months back: https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/7/1/21308153/the-ezra-klei...

⬐ freetonik

Oh, this is great, thank you.

⬐ asdff

Very scary and I do get a sense that my recall ability and general focus is severely diminished after a decade of being active on reddit and other places like here. The problem is I'm on this dopamine treadmill. I see a thread with an interesting topic and a lot of comments, and I want to dive in and spend an hour sifting through it. I check my subreddits and HN every day.

And for what? I get nothing out of it, maybe a little pissed off every now and then. Most articles I read are forgettable and have no impact on my life. There is literally nothing that I've learned on the internet over close to two decades of use that I couldn't learn more thoroughly with a book or by looking at a newspaper, and in recent years it's been getting impossible to find actual factual subject information on the internet that isn't some half assed SEOified article that doesn't even have my answer.

I think I'm just gonna pull the plug and block these websites with some browser extension, because I am just too compulsive at this point, too engrained into this automatic unconscious action of cmd+t->news.y->tab->enter to do it under my own volition. Sometimes I sit down and I don't even remember opening HN, but there I am scrolling through the front page.

I still need the internet for emails, stack overflow, or finding articles in my field, but that sort of use I will allow because I take that information and synthesize it into something novel and useful. I'm going to pull the plug on being a mindless internet consumer, who leaves no time for actual thinking in between the rampant consumption.

Good bye, HN, hopefully for good but we will see how long I'm able to remain disciplined. I'm kinda excited about what sort of mental clarity this might bring me and how much that will improve my life.

⬐ shrugthug

Good luck to you! I feel all of the sentiments that you mentioned in your comment. Here are some tips for you that have really helped me:

- Turn off auto-complete on your desktop browser. The "cmd+t > news.y" or "cmt+t > r" is a real catalyst for mindless browsing sites like Hacker News and Reddit.

- Uninstall apps like Reddit, Facebook, or Instagram on your phone. If you really want to access them, then use the web experience through the mobile browser. It's enough to get the job done, but not good enough to be addicting (no auto-play videos, notifications, and the UX is slightly degraded).

- Turn off all non-pertinent notifications on your phone, especially things like news, email, and social media. The only daily apps which have I notifications enabled for me are Messages, a sports app, and daily habit reminders.

- If I feel like I'm using a social media site too much on a laptop, then I change the hosts file to re-direct to localhost. Bam, access revoked for a while. I've found that this works better than browser extensions. With extensions, I used to just right-click > disable, then go to my time-wasting website. With the hosts file method, I need to figure out the path to the hosts file (I never remember it), open it in a text editor, type in my changes, then save the file with sudo permissions. I thought about scripting it, but I think the manual process is more effective at preventing me from constantly enabling/disabling access. There's more intention behind the action.

- Pay for a newspaper subscription. It's so refreshing to consume quality journalism vs trendy click-bait articles. My recommendation would be read one national outlet (NY Times, Wall Street Journal) and your local newspaper. Instead of browsing Reddit/HN in the morning, open up your newspaper app.

His book, The Shallows, is an incredible journey into the human/technology relationship. As much as we create and change technology, it likewise changes us.

Worth a read for anyone in tech.

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

⬐ shmageggy

How does it hold up almost 10 years later? The internet has changed a lot in that time. I recently became interested in reading this, but I was wondering if I'd be missing out on anything more recent.

⬐ zahma

First, you should definitely listen to the full interview because they go into depth on the internet's effect on how we read and then conceptualize the information to make associations. These are the underpinnings of our analytic capability, and Carr believes that on the whole we're losing a lot more of our associational capacity that we used to have when our brains weren't bombarded with interruptions. Our brains like to hoard data, and the way the internet works and (increasingly often) designed to provide lots of tidbits that excite us and alter our neuroplasticity. They do go into some counterarguments.

Also, an update to The Shallows has been re-released recently on the 10-year anniversary, which is why Ezra Klein interviewed Carr. Klein seems to have had a volte-face moment in which, as a blogger, he was dismissive of any critique about the internet because it was an instantaneous resource-rich environment. Now he understands that when he reads he's always searching for what he calls this "fugue-like" state of "deep reading" that allows him to understand and connect what he's reading to other arguments and topics.

⬐ ciarannolan

I think it holds up extremely well since it's more broad than just specific internet technologies. It's more of a history and sociology of humans and technology.

I can't recommend it enough.

⬐ chrisbrandow

I have not read it, but Ezra says in his interview that reading it now makes him feel foolish that he was dismissive of the book(‘s argument) when it came out.

⬐ kmote00

From the article: "His book, a finalist for the Pulitzer that year, was dismissed by many, including me. Ten years on, I regret that dismissal. Reading it now, The Shallows is outrageously prescient, offering a framework and language for ideas and experiences I’ve been struggling to define for a decade."

>0. Search Engines 1. Video Games 2. GPS 3. Medical 3D Imaging (CT/MRI) 4. Genetic Sequencing 5. 3D Printing 6. Autonomous Machines (ground robots, drones)

Well:

0. a huge dilution of the concept of expertise (see my other point) and easy access to crap information mixed-in with the good in huge piles,

1. a big waste of time for children/teens/infantilized adults (and a killer of socialization) that's already an "addiction",

2. something ho-hum (I was there in the 90s and 80s before GPS became widespread. We could still walk around towns, find our way, and drive places).

3. OK-ish, still an order of magnitude less helpful in saving lives compared to early low hanging fruits like access to running water, antibiotics, hand-washing in hospitals, etc.

4. Still a yawn atm.

5. A fad if I ever saw one, touted to "change the world" and already nearly forgotten except in enthusiast circles,

6. Something still marginally useful, and with a large potential for a dystopian future (large parts of the population living in slums as their work is not required, drones/robots used to police autocratic states, etc).

>You aren't excited about having all of human knowledge in your pocket?

No. I'm more excited about the output (books, articles, etc) from people pre-2000 (sometimes much pre) who didn't have "all of human knowledge in [their] pocket" and had to study hard, be dedicated, and actually digest the information to consider themselves knowledgable.

As opposed to "instant faux-experts" (people confident to chime in because they've read 2 paragraphs about a subject in Wikipedia - or worse something like some anti-vaxxing website etc), and: https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

Access to "all of human knowledge" was hardly ever a problem since the invention of the printing press, and even less in the 20th century with libraries, bookstores, media, and so on. Knowing what to read, how to value some piece of knowledge (which could be crap, like 90% of what's on the net is), and understanding of what you've read was a problem since forever.

I used to have that feeling. Reading The Shallows[1] made me stop and think about what might be causing it, and forced me to think about what I might do about it.

My solution was to drastically cut back my internet use most of the time I'd have spent online reading books instead. I do what I need to online for work, and I browse HN once a day to keep up with the latest and greatest.

I've found that my attention span returned relatively quickly, and reading books for hours at a time became easy again. The neat thing is that the increased attention span didn't just apply to books. I'm able to get more done at work, too, by staying locked on to whatever I'm doing and not getting distracted.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

I'm disappointed this article didn't get much attention here. I've loved Carr's 'The Shallows' [1]. Definitely a recommended read for IT people.

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

An interesting book on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

A review: Carr—author of The Big Switch (2007) and the much-discussed Atlantic Monthly story “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”—is an astute critic of the information technology revolution. Here he looks to neurological science to gauge the organic impact of computers, citing fascinating experiments that contrast the neural pathways built by reading books versus those forged by surfing the hypnotic Internet, where portals lead us on from one text, image, or video to another while we’re being bombarded by messages, alerts, and feeds. This glimmering realm of interruption and distraction impedes the sort of comprehension and retention “deep reading” engenders, Carr explains. And not only are we reconfiguring our brains, we are also forging a “new intellectual ethic,” an arresting observation Carr expands on while discussing Google’s gargantuan book digitization project.

⬐ kiba

It's only a problem if you're actually bombarded with alerts and linkbait and refused to read anything smaller than one thousand words long.

"The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr might be of interest to you. And, well, to almost everyone here - your symptoms probably already appeared in one way or another to anyone who's reading this.

Personally, while I consider myself pretty disciplined, I feel deeply frustrated (almost angry at myself) whenever I'm actually trying to focus on something and feel the need to also do/see/check/read something else. Not exactly a facebook feed, but I've come to Hacker News while reading. I don't know what's the most commonly accepted definition of addiction, but this certainly feels like it.

http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp...

I've read over 500 fiction books and 2000+ non-fiction. I've read many of the big thick classics like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Infinite Jest. I've kept a spreadsheet of all the books I've read somewhat like Art Garfunkel[1] (of Simon & Garfunkel music duo).

I've also read Nick Carr's "The Shallows"[2] and other authors about about the web's effect on attention span, distractions, etc.

With all that said, I'm not convinced that people "should" read long form books. I read all those books because I personally enjoyed it. I just can't say with confidence that others should do the same or they will be "missing out" on some unquantifiable intellectual nirvana.

I also enjoy getting lost in Wikipedia articles and jumping around hyperlinks without fully finishing the wiki article I was reading. (Wiki articles are not ever "finished" anyway so there's no guilt trip in leaving the page to head down another rabbit hole.)

15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos? I think so. I don't hold my traditional reading method for C++ to be superior; it's simply what I did before the internet was available in 1995. I certainly did not learn Golang by reading a book cover-to-cover.

Books certainly have benefits but I think they are overstated in relation to non-book forms of consuming words.

[1]http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/list1.html

[2]http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp...

⬐ pdpi

> 15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos?

Not saying it's better or worse, but I'm willing to say that the understanding you'll get from blogs is going to be be different than from a long-form book.

Books get the benefit of knowing where they left off one chapter, and picking it up on the next. Unless you're reading a long series of posts on the same blog (which, in the limit, approaches reading a book), reading blog posts will lack that continuity, and I find them inferior for building up a basic understanding of a topic. What blogs do really well, IMO, is for teaching you well-isolated techniques, or other such limited-scope ideas.

Your experience with C++ And Golang are in no way, shape or form comparable. If you've been doing C++ for 15 years, Golang is a comparatively small learning curve. You just need to pick up on a few syntactic differences and you'll be at that basic level of competence that books will give you, and you're ready for the single-topic, specialized learning that you'll get from blogs.

⬐ Rapzid

I'm with you 100% on this. To me blog posts and internet articles are really good for getting insight into a particular issue you're currently having, or a to be exposed to a bit of interesting trivia. I find books to be far superior if you want to maximize your knowledge ingestion for a given set of time.

I once tried to give somebody my C# 4.0 In a Nutshell book when I upgrade to the 5.0 book. "Why do I need that, I can just look at MSDN?". Hrmm.

⬐ restalis

"Why do I need that, I can just look at MSDN?"

MSDN has all of it, everything that should be documented. It is easy to get lost, not knowing what and how much should be taken first. The value of a book in such case is to have its author as your guide (as in a tutorial, if you will, but a little bit more than that).

⬐ None

None

⬐ mattmanser

Every single programming book in the world after you've read the first one:

Chapter 1: Simple types (um, could have done this in a page)

Chapter 2: Complex types (this too)

Chapter 3: How you can compile from the command line (even though no-one in their sane mind does this in this language)

Chapter 4: Inheritance (oh god, please stop)

Chapter 5: Conditional statements (no, for the love of god stop)

Chapter 6: Loops (right, I'm skipping some chapters)

Chapter 15: Trangonian Complex Pulsar boofs and why you should use them for everything (even though no-one does and never will because they suck)

Chapter 16: How to make a program (this chapter should have been the entire book)

Chapter 17: How to debug (lots of hand waving and no actual details on how to actually debug the program)

Appendix: Listing every word used in the book in alphabetical order and on which pages each was mentioned.

CD: With a 3 year out of date IDE, possibly abandoned, and if you're really lucky some fairly benign malware

⬐ dunmalg

>Appendix: Listing every word used in the book in alphabetical order and on which pages each was mentioned.

That's the Index. The Appendix is where they list FTP and web sites that are long defunct, sample code for interfacing with a discontinued piece of hardware, and of course an ASCII table.

⬐ coliveira

It looks like you only read Deitel & Deitel books.

⬐ logicallee

who would pay $25.99-$54.99 for any of these ten pages?

http://learnxinyminutes.com/ - the Java article is 1500 words :) and, I gather, sufficient to get started.

⬐ noir_lord

Back in the day that was every dèlphi book to a tee.

⬐ None

None

⬐ Someone

"Learn x in -1 days" books follow that pattern, but original ones?

Not this one: http://www.stroustrup.com/3rd_tbl.html Or this one: http://www.forth.com/starting-forth/index.html Or this one: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/toc/toc.html Or this one: http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2010/04/table-of-contents-for-...

In general, once you know a few different languages and want to learn a new one, read the language spec or a good book on the language.

Good blog posts are an option, too, but those are hard to discriminate from bad ones, and run a greater risk of being incomplete (hm: here's and idea for a new product: a service that ranks blogs for accuracy, completeness and timeliness (K&R C is accurate and complete, but if you want to learn C now, it shouldn't be the only thing you read, and possibly not even a thing you read))

⬐ mattmanser

It was a joke.

⬐ madaxe_again

I cannot count what I have read. Growing up (6-12) I had no access to digital tech, apart from a BBC micro, no television, no comics, no games other than chess. The only available recreational activities were reading or spending time outdoors.

I did both in droves, often simultaneously, and it was bad enough that I'd often be caught reading a book under my desk in class. Mind, the school library only comprised "literature" - no kids books, Harry Potter was a gleam in jk's eye, it was Tolstoy, Homer, Proust, Euripides, Dickens, whatever a nine year old is supposed to read.

Come to think of it, reading in class was only punishable by the book being confiscated until the end of class. I remember in my miserable year of middle school in the U.S. being caught reading, and they not only confiscated the book but suspended me. It was a serious infraction in their eyes, as you were only allowed to read pre-approved books on school grounds.

Perhaps people don't read because educational systems for the most part actively discourage it. Initiatives which focus on getting kids to read more tend to be about appearances and metrics, not kids reading. They also tend to turn reading into this exotic, "other", task/chore in the minds of most due to shit like "you must read 500 words tonight" - I remember in 7th grade kids bursting into tears in response to that sort of thing, so well had their aversion therapy taken root.

Me, I'd ban kids from all except the most primitive digital technology until their teens, as well as all other sources of manufactured "fun". Reading is fun, but we have forgotten this. Now it has to be loud and sparkling and expensive, or it's just not fun for our crack-addled minds.

⬐ itsybitsycoder

> you were only allowed to read pre-approved books on school grounds.

Wow, that is just horrendous.

⬐ madaxe_again

Yeah. Spending a year in the US education system was an eye-opener. Sciath (Science/Math) and Soclish (Social Studies & English) were the two topics. "Elite" school, 7th grade. Mindbleached kids, conformity was king, everything, everything resulted in hysterical breathlessness. Couldn't get out of there soon enough.

They really didn't know what to do with an 11 year old who would sit there reading Aristotle in ancient greek under the desk - apart from suspend me, repeatedly, and breathing a big sigh of relief when I told them to stick it and went back to school in the UK - they admitted that they would have expelled me had I not left... which reflects the American approach to problem solving - if you can't figure it out, pretend it doesn't exist.

⬐ mauricemir

I remember along with one or two others being allowed to read on my own as we where so much faster/better at reading than our peers. I had a raeding age of 20 at 10

Thease days we would be forced into the Ofstead approved learning outcomes - or alternatively gotten rid of to game the schools figures

⬐ zaphar

When I was an introverted teenager I read 500 books in one summer. My mom tracked them all in a notebook because she wanted to know just what exactly I was reading.

To this day I have zero difficulty finishing a book. My problem has always been stopping. I'm practically clinically unable to disengage from a book once I've started. Enough so that I have to meter my reading to prevent myself from disappearing for months on end. Not even the internet has made a dent in that. In some ways I wish I were a little more like the author. It would be nice to not feel a little worried when I start a book that I'll go so deep I'll miss something in the world around me.

⬐ vlasev

Umm, 500 books in one summer? Yeah right! What kind of books? Were they long? That's over 4 books per DAY! I don't think so.

⬐ zaphar

The sizes varied but most of them were fiction. One day I read seven in an evening. It's not that special. It was the result of a highly insular life spent not doing much other than read.

⬐ nevster

Wish I could read that fast...

⬐ gradstudent

Seven books in one evening? I cannot fathom such a thing. Were these "books" of the comic variety perchance?

⬐ zaphar

Nope, I believe they were teen mystery books probably about 100-200 pages long. I read pretty fast.

⬐ vosper

I dunno, I think 4 books per day is do-able if the books are shorter and are an easy read. When I was about 13 I read Red Storm Rising from cover to cover in a day. I checked Amazon just now and it's 830 pages in paperback form.

Years later I spent hours getting through the first few chapters of Godel, Escher, Bach. It was such slow going, and required so much thought, that I ultimately gave up.

⬐ oldmanjay

why, because you haven't done it? your tone certainly doesn't convince me you have much else as a point.

⬐ vlasev

Well, no, I don't have MUCH else as a point. If you're reading that fast you probably not going to read as well. Obviously we're not going for perfect retention here but still. That's a ridiculous amount of text to go through in such a short span of time. I feel like at that point it starts being less about reading and more about adding numbers to a list. But I digress.

⬐ walljm

You're assuming zaphar reads/comprehends the same way you do. I can't read that fast period, and if i'm reading fast don't comprehend as much, but I have first hand experience with how good zaphar's comprehension is when he is reading very fast. It has some to do with how deeply he concentrates by nature, something he was born with that I wasn't.

⬐ itsybitsycoder

No, I was a huge bookworm as a kid and I read almost as much as that in the summers. It wasn't about racking up points, just pleasure reading. When you are reading for fun and not for learning, you can go for a lot longer without getting tired and skip all the boring parts. It's not that much different than burning through an entire season of your favorite TV show, or through an entire single-player game, in a weekend.

⬐ sireat

It is quite possible to read 500 books over 100 days as a secluded teenager if one is reading mostly 200-300 page books and most of the books do not require perfect attention to detail.

A proficient reader can easily read 2 pages a minute, so lets say 1200 pages/2=600 minutes, so 10 hours a day. Seems quite doable for a bored teenager without a computer/tablet/phone/outside activity.

I don't think I ever did more than 3 books a day, but still possible to do what OP said.

I think many/most of us has have read a page turner in one late night session.

⬐ vlasev

Well, I guess you are right. I doubt the speed would be consistent over 10 hours but I can easily imagine a bored teenager could sleep 7-8 hours and read most of the rest of the time. So the number drops from maybe about 500 words per minute to something less than that. And that still allows some great comprehension.

⬐ pm90

Yep, I had a similar problem and had to deliberately not read more fiction because I had to study engineering and stuff. Now, with the busyness of life, its a lot easier though. Like you said, the introversion may have made it more attractive to just escape into the excitement of a fiction book.

⬐ Animats

"15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos?"

That's a real problem. You can't write and sell a book for a fast-changing language. (Go may have stabilized enough for a printed book. A useful Rust book is impossible right now.) A writer and publisher can't invest the time and effort to produce a book that will be obsolete when it ships.

⬐ vlasev

This is why it would be neat to have the book in an online format that can be updated from time to time. Something more than a blog, manual or wikipedia. That's in case one wants a book NOW and wouldn't want to wait until the language stabilizes.

⬐ jacalata

Check out O'Reilly early release books.

⬐ None

None

⬐ sanderjd

Over the years, I've found myself naturally reading fewer and fewer technology-specific books but more and more books on concepts and fundamentals. I find that the internet has the most up-to-date and well-organized information about specific technologies, but that the "classics" do a much better job of motivating and explaining deeper material than typical internet resources.

Thanks for the trivia about Art Garfunkel! I do much the same thing on Goodreads, but I started fairly recently, so I'm sure I'm missing a few.

⬐ plaguuuuuu

It depends.

People used to read 500 page books on compilers. Would you read an equivalently long blog article on compilers?

With the Internet we've gained the ability to more readily acquire knowledge in little bits at a time, over a lot of areas. But most of us are incapable of reading a really huge article in depth. And thus we get more shallow levels of understanding, but across a wider range of topics. This explains a lot of arguments on the internet.

⬐ davidgerard

You mean, have I read these books when the entire thing is put on the web? Yes.

⬐ klibertp

> But most of us are incapable of reading a really huge article in depth

It's not a "capability", it's a skill. The problem is it's becoming less and less important in everyday life for most people, which in turn makes them abandon its training. As with most skills, without training you become worse at it with time.

I'm not sure if that's good or bad thing that you can now learn without having mastered this skill. Is the understanding you gain via lots of small chunks of knowledge worse than the one you get from reading The Dragon Book? I don't know; looks like a good topic for research in cognitive science.

Personally I do like reading long and involved texts, but I too learned to enjoy it before the Internet became popular. I don't know if I'd be equally interested in such texts had I started just a few years later.

⬐ anarazel

> With all that said, I'm not convinced that people "should" read long form books. I read all those books because I personally enjoyed it. I just can't say with confidence that others should do the same or they will be "missing out" on some unquantifiable intellectual nirvana.

Isn't the point is that the author of the article actually does enjoy reading books. And feels it's helpful for him personally? And that despite that he'd not managed to read in a satisfying manner for years; because he'd let him get to "addicted" to short term distractions?

I feel with the author; I still manage to read more than five books, but there's weeks were that's not the case. To a large degree because I let myself get distracted in a similar way. Without it being beneficial to myself or others.

⬐ ryandrake

When I was a teenager, I had time to read constantly. Now that I'm an adult, with a job that demands long hours, a wife and kid, and responsibilities, my entire day is blocked out hour-by-hour in the calendar. I simply have no time to pour through a 1,000 word article let alone a 500 page book. I don't even watch movies anymore. It's quicker to just head to Wikipedia and get the gist of it. Quite honestly with 90% of media out there today, the 2 sentence summary is enough.

⬐ coldtea

>With all that said, I'm not convinced that people "should" read long form books. I read all those books because I personally enjoyed it. I just can't say with confidence that others should do the same or they will be "missing out" on some unquantifiable intellectual nirvana.

This "unquantifiable intellectual nirvana" was used to be called "civilization".

⬐ sehugg

You won't get very many perspectives from pre-1995 without reading books, though.

⬐ Retra

Whenever I real long-form books, my mind will occasionally wander into other areas, while my eyes keep reading on. I'll have to continually go back and re-read what I feel like I've just read. This isn't just an internet-fueled lack of attention, it's how I've always read, and how I image most people read most of the time.

The difference is with a website, you can go investigate your immediate thoughts rather than committing to the re-read. It is lazier, maybe. It's probably not great if you want to learn something in depth and stay focused on it for long periods of time.

⬐ kiba

Typical mind fallacy is thinking that the way your mind operates is automatically how everyone's mind operate.

⬐ Retra

Well, I'm no freak of nature, either.

⬐ nsomaru

Wouldn't say it's about being 'normal' or a 'freak.'

If you haven't cultivated the habit of reading, it's not effortless (like most things). When things aren't effortless (or close thereto), its easy for an undisciplined mind to wander.

If it's something that you value, you will do it enough that it becomes effortless. Perhaps the author missed that point?

⬐ walljm

Though your point about cultivating the discipline is applicable, not all brains process data the same way, and its possible the posters habit is a factor of biology not effort.

⬐ thret

This sometimes happens to me if I am not in the mood, need to be doing something else, or if the book is badly written. Some text books need to be read with concentration.

But if something is good, it is more like a trance - I'll 'come to' hours later and need to be prodded with a stick if you want to interrupt me.

⬐ gone35

That definitely sounds like a very mild but treatable form of language disorder to me. It might be too mild to be of interest to language disorder clinicians, but maybe you could try 'treat' yourself by setting up a long-term plan of progressively 'harder'/longer reading materials. Check out for instance Pearson's Developmental English series [1]. Might seem arduous and pointless; but if it increases your ability to read long-form comfortably, it could make an enormous difference to your life.

[1] http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/course/Advanced-Read...

⬐ fsloth

"Whenever I real long-form books, my mind will occasionally wander into other areas, while my eyes keep reading on. I'll have to continually go back and re-read what I feel like I've just read."

When that happens to me while reading a book often enough I decide the text is not for me and move to another book.

"The difference is with a website, you can go investigate your immediate thoughts rather than committing to the re-read. "

Funny, I would describe my most engaging readings of a book precisely by this sort of associative experience (unless it's fiction... which I don't actually read that much anymore).

⬐ walljm

"I'll have to continually go back and re-read what I feel like I've just read. "

This happens to me sometimes, but its rare and usually means I'm tired or not interested in the subject matter. If I'm interested I'm glued to the page and won't break concentration for hours.

⬐ peu4000

Not saying you have it, but this is a common symptom of ADHD.

I'd recommend the book Driven to Distraction, it's pretty informative!

⬐ majelix

> I'll have to continually go back and re-read what I feel like I've just read.

That's a feature, not a bug.

Limit your first reading to basic understanding of the plot and setting; ignore exploration of "deeper" themes until subsequent re-reads.

⬐ Retra

What I'm saying is that my eyes simply scan the words while I think of other things. There's no comprehension there, I'm just losing my place in the text.

⬐ jader201

"I'll have to continually go back and re-read what I feel like I've just read."

This is me.

"and how I image most people read most of the time."

I wish I knew if this were true. I've always felt that I have some sort of "disorder" or some form of ADHD or something that causes my mind to wander anytime I try to read a book. I'm a terribly slow reader for this reason (at least when it comes to books -- internet articles, for some reason, don't seem to have this same effect on me), and as a result, I've not read too many books at all. I mostly get my information in smaller bursts.

Come to think of it, whenever I see what I consider super long articles posted on HN, and a ton of discussion about how great the article was, I feel terribly inadequate that I can't read said article in less than an hour (or more). Short articles I'm fine with, it's the longer ones -- and books -- that I struggle with.

And it's certainly not the result of any "conditioning" from reading short internet articles all the time -- I've been like this since long before the era of blogs and HN.

Would love it if someone could shed some light on this.

⬐ tumbling_stone

You have summarized most of my experiences and observations of my reading habits.

I have tried reading long novels and I have rarely been able to read them efficiently with concentration the whole way, at first I would well up with a lot of self hatred when my friends could read the same books in lesser amounts of time, remembering a lot of interesting details and hold very insightful discussions about it later. I blamed myself for not having better concentration, for feigning interest in books and hundred other accusation that were only partly true.

But, I persevered and found that I could read short texts, remember them pretty well, think about them for some days and largely absorb the idea. I changed my reading habits. I started reading short stories, essays, academic papers and smaller technical books, but providing a lot of to time to reflect upon the material just read.

I stopped focusing on the book count and purely on maximizing the amount of impact produced by reading something.

⬐ jfoutz

I think there are two reasons I read. 1, i need to know something. This may be a pressing work concern, or just a genuine interest in something. A few weeks ago i read 40 pages on cocktail ice. 2, the author is really compelling. I've read quite a few novels that are just hard to put down.

I'd bet, you have no trouble with those cases. You may rifle through tech documentation till you read the paragraph or 10 that are relevant to your problem, but that part you can just breeze through. Because it matters I'd also bet there are a few books or stories you have no trouble with because the author has really drawn you in, and you care about what's happening, and it matters. If not, take a look at hemmingway or maybe chuck palahniuk. they both put a lot of effort into making short powerful stories. Survivor or invisible monsters might be worth a read.

Other stuff, well, my tolerance really depends on my level of curiosity. If i'm feeling particularly curious, i can read some pretty boring stuff, but not for a long time. Sometimes deep insights are hidden in boring words.

Anyway, you're not weird. People have different defaults. Most stuff i kind of grind through, and don't really soak up the full meaning. On the other hand, most writing is pretty bad, and isn't really worth that much effort. The vast majority of stuff is just rehashed restated rewritten copies of copies that contain enough essence of the original to give you a hint of that dopamine rush.

⬐ damian2000

> > "and how I image most people read most of the time."

> I wish I knew if this were true.

I think it really depends on the book (or part of the book) you are reading. Often the start of a book will be designed to grab your attention, but its possible to lose interest part way through the book, or have to concentrate harder to finish chapters.

Its common - my high school English teacher told us about it way back many years ago.

⬐ TheOtherHobbes

The traditional three act structure means books and movies often start with plenty of action, pause the pace in the middle, where characters mostly talk or walk or think or remember rather than doing action stuff, and build up to a big climax with faster pacing at the end.

It's a very popular structure. But now that everyone seems to have ADHD, it's being replaced by episodic structures which end each chapter with a cliff hanger.

Episodic structure isn't new, but quite a few savvy writers have discovered it's a better fit for ebook publishing than traditional long form.

⬐ ajcarpy2005

Look into nootropics.

⬐ noir_lord

Not for me, when I read I get lost in the book and it gets dark outside, the cats come and sleep on me, the street lights go on and I look up at 10pm and I've read half a novel.

It's a sense of peace I get from few other things in life.

⬐ sukilot

This, or even watching a slow paced movie (the kind more common before 1990) is incredibly refreshing break from the modern distraction filled world.

⬐ noir_lord

Funny you should say that I watched terminator the other day in prep for the new one, forgotten how slow relatively action films used to be, I kinda miss that sometimes.

⬐ walljm

I love a well paced but slow film... some of them feel almost dream like, like poetry.

⬐ jmccree

As I've gotten older and have less free time and there's so much more content out there, one practice I've come to accept is reading the wikipedia page and plot synopsis for a book/movie before starting watching something. In the same way I read HN comments before deciding whether to read the original article often times. Before wikipedia I would read the last chapters of books first.

I'm more worried about my time being spoiled than the plot being spoiled, and after all a good movie/book is even better the 2nd time around. This has allowed me to commit to watching or reading things I never would have before as I'd get bored (read: worried this is a waste of my time) 10 minutes into a slow moving movie.

⬐ Tycho

But how does just reading the synopsis indicate if something is any good? Wouldn't you be better just looking at the IMDB score? Or are you looking out to avoid things with 'dumb' endings?

⬐ jmccree

There's something awesome about the way you really get "into the universe" when you spend hours reading a book or binge watching a tv show. All of the events and characters are fresh in your brain and you see the connections you may have missed if there was a night's sleep and a day's work in between.

It's called 'The Shallows', and is an interesting read: http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/...

For a very detailed take on the subject I suggest "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr.

A notable fact about this book is that 20% of the entire volume are references to various scientific studies used throughout the text to substantiate the author's position. It's not a fluff piece.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393339750

> Nonetheless, I think it's worth entertaining the hypothesis that in many ways the internet is like candy for your brain, and constant exposure might have subtle -- perhaps not yet fully recognized or appreciated -- effects on our cognition.

It does, actually. Read Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows' [0], it's a pretty decent book about the subject. It also starts off with comparing our usage of the internet with the rise of reading - you know, books and the like. History lesson; humans needed to adapt their brains to be able to read attentively for longer periods of time. The book contrasts that with the ADD nature of the internet, and yet, indicates how it's actually going back to where we were before. Or just a change similar to when books became publicly accessible.

tl;dr, yes there is a change, but I don't think it's necessarily good or bad; just different. And shocking / to be resisted by the older generation, just as how their parents were shocked and resisting the Beatles and similar long-haired freaks. :p

[0]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/...

I do agree with you. Maybe it's something the Internet is "doing to my brain" [1], but everyday I feel less and less inclined to resort to video when I'm actively seeking information; I guess the "new" me can't stand watching something at its own pace (or, worst, focusing on one and only one thing at once). I got too used to reading, skimming and scanning at my own pace (and no - clicking randomly at a timeline or accelerating the playback is not the same).

I've noticed this before MOOCs, actually. Take web development tutorials, for instance. A few colleagues of mine loved video tutorials from (e.g) lynda.com; I found it utterly boring and inefficient.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/...

It's interesting to think about how underutilized some of that knowledge actually is in the broad scheme of things - for instance, how popular is reading the classics of literature, versus the latest novella of the day?

Changes in technology have a fundamental impact on the way humans interacting with the world (for better or worse), an interesting book called The Shallows [1] highlights some of these points. Is the technology we're utilizing moving us in a direction that is long-term beneficial or harmful? People can access information more easily, but at the expense of what - lack of focus? Problems with deep thought and long-term planning?

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp...

⬐ avenger123

The biggest issue I see is that information has become cheap and hence just less valuable. How much more would I get out of reading Shakespeare if I didn't have hundred's of blogs analyzing everything he's written? Before, I might join a discussion class or really read the stories and take the time to find meaning in them. The fact that its right there lends itself to just almost not caring.

See also Sherry Turkle[1], Nicholas Carr[2], etc.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Alone-Together-Expect-Technology-Other... [2] http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp...

Not only are they making a point about how terrible security is ("Do you think every hacker announces everything they've hacked?"), but they've also called out the internet on its generally abysmal attention span. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd had this written on day zero.

Neither of these are novel concepts: we've heard about abysmal internet security (FireSheep) and low attention spans (Nicholas Carr[0, 1] and Jonah Lehrer[2]) repeatedly over the last couple of years.

This release may seem profound to you, but LulzSec proposes no solutions to the problems they're creating. They're too nihilistic to put on white hats, and they deserve none of your praise as a result.

[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-googl...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp...

[2] http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/04/attention_and_intelli...

⬐ saulrh

The difference is that LulzSec managed to get their word on every tech blog in the world. They also managed to get their basic message - nothing is safe, and here's proof - onto nearly every single major news site in existence, and they made their message immediately and personally important to millions of people. That's why I'm praising them. They don't need to propose a solution; that's already been done. They don't need to have a new message; extant messages are good enough. What they bring to the party is visibility.

⬐ achompas

What they bring to the party is visibility.

Do published books and articles in The Atlantic, Wired, and NYT not work for you? Those are a few of the news sites that have covered declining attention spans.

As for internet security--anyone who can do something about it already knew there was a problem. On the consumer end, what are users supposed to do? Add symbols to their passwords? That would delay GPU- or SSD-based brute force techniques by, what, 10 seconds?

⬐ FilterJoe

On the consumer end - what needs to be done is a massive education campaign, kept reasonably simple. It was done in 2000-2003 for anti-virus and it (roughly) worked for the 80% or so of the Windows world that did what they were told (by the mainstream press).

The mainstream press has (so far) done a terrible job on password education. You see long lists of rules that nobody but a security professional or hacker would follow. It needs to be boiled down to something simple, like:

Use a password manager to assign unique, random 15 character passwords for all accounts, protecting them with a strong master password.

I put together a guide based on this concept here:

http://www.filterjoe.com/2011/04/14/passwords-guide-without-...

Unfortunately, this (and probably other) good password guide(s) get far less attention than the latest Sony exploit.

⬐ saulrh

An article on Wired gets read and forgotten. An article about passwords in the NYT gets dismissed as "newfangled kids". Ten million credit cards stolen - one of which is yours - gets remembered. Having your FB account manually and maliciously defaced changes your life. That's visibility that no article or book can sell.

Consumers are supposed to start using tools like KeePass or LastPass. Adding symbols to a simple 6-character password doesn't help. Adding symbols to a high-entropy 20-character password and never using a password twice makes you basically immune to this kind of thing.