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Comment by notsureaboutpg | Hacker News Reader

Dovetails nicely with all the weird music these days (lo-fi, binaural, whatever else, meant to be backgrounded and not paid attention to).

I guess the remaining medium which you can't just numb your body out to is the written word? Books (esp. classics) are still just as intriguing and engrossing as they were when they came out. You can't _really_ binge a book like a TV show. Books don't have live concerts where the point is entirely other than the enjoyment of the content. Books benefit from all the technological advancements of today (e-readers, e-ink, digital copies, etc) without having to become vapid background scenery as a result.

And of course, books make way way way less money than movies and music as a result. Not sure what I've proven here, but just the thoughts I had while reading this article.

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> You can't _really_ binge a book like a TV show

What do you call reading a book cover to cover in one sitting? It can take as long as watching a whole season of a TV series.

I can completely read Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle' in about 3-4 hours--just a nice afternoon. When I read Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses' or Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow' it can easily take me 3-4 months (though if binged, it would probably take a month), not just due to length differences prose style. Vonnegut is conversational (Pynchon's 'Crying of Lot 49' is almost as easy as Vonnegut's books) Rushdie and Pynchon are (usually) dense and complex. So some books will take most people a lot more time than just binging GoT end to end. But some aren't much more than a long movie.

Weird music "these days"? Unlike the companion radio stations which existed for decades? Or the classic pieces that a lot of the lo-fi incorporates? Or the restaurant background-piano?

> Books (esp. classics) are still just as intriguing and engrossing as they were when they came out.

What we're used to these days has definitely moved the goal posts, at least in the adventure themes. For example the classic Bram's Dracula is not really exciting these days. The described technology is not amazing either (oh, he played a wax cylinder record)

> Books don't have live concerts where the point is entirely other than the enjoyment of the content.

Have you ever been to an author meeting + book signing events? Relatively popular authors can fill whole theatres.

> Books benefit from all the technological advancements of today (...) without having to become vapid background scenery as a result.

Have you heard of background audiobooks?

> the written word

Oh yes you can! The majority of articles, opinion pieces and books are a drawn out mess. Like that meme about recipes not just containing the recipe, but a whole story the reader usually doesn't care about, how the cook first tried out this dish on his first date with his ex wife, who is the one that got away. The same goes for many books: Simple thoughts are turned into pages, chapters, whole books. >90% padding you do not need to read to fully understand the book. But if you want to publish and sell a book, you can't publish an article. And if you want to publish an article, you can't publish a tweet.

> without having to become vapid background scenery as a result

Obviously not a direct analogy, but podcasts seem like a new-age version of audio books or novellas

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