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Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

Surely storing Unicode in thin layers of dried tree mush stitched together in a bind is a bit outdated these days, right? Yet the demand for transmitting useful information into brains is higher than ever. If we rethink of books as a medium for thought transmission, especially the actionable thoughts of domain experts, then physical books should seem to us like dinosaur bones. Its the inertia of the dusty university library and the Madison Avenue publishing industry that keeps book relevant. If the sole goal is learning, there is still much unrealized potential to be innovated in web and mobile apps.

The iPhone is still only 14 years old. Somewhere between now and universal brain-computer interfaces are many education unicorns waiting to be found.

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I like reading books because: 1) easier to focus 2) easier to take/draw notes in the margin 3) static content

4) have proven than can last for 200 years, 5) less eye-straining than normal screens, 6) can't be remotely erased or blocked by third parties.

What if I told you I had an amazing new technology for information transferal? It has infinite battery life, is readable in almost any lighting conditions, reading it won't wear out your eyes, it is water resistant and wont' break when dropping it or hitting it with a hammer. As an added bonus, the vendor can't stealthily revoke access to this information or change it without telling you. You're allowed to lend it to a single person at a time with the downside that you temporarily no longer have access to the information. This miracle technology is 100% recyclable and its manufacture is environmentally friendly and ethical requiring no rare earth metals.

Yeah there's a reason we still love books.

Each book also comes with a "free screen". We programmers have dual-monitors or triple-monitor setups.

Well, Dungeons and Dragons dungeon-masters have 2 or 3 copies of important rulebooks (Core Rulebook and/or Beastiaries) because we get tired of flipping through the pages all the time.

But its not so hard to have two books (Ex: Bestiary1 + Beastiary 2 copies) and have a page on Goblins + a 2nd book with the page on Devils to run a Goblin+Devil encounter.

> it is water resistant

Is it? I wouldn't want to test that claim on any books I own or have borrowed.

I've dropped many in the bath, and one or two down the loo - they still worked.

Well, it'll survive a coffee spill at least, I can attest to that.

Issac Asimov wrote a similar essay in 1974 called The Ancient and the Ultimate.

99.9% yes. Acid in most papers still implies an O(100yr) lifetime, AFAIK.

You might be interested in Why Books Don't Work by Andy Matuschak

https://andymatuschak.org/books/

I have to thank you, because projects like his are exactly what I had in mind with my original post, but I had forgotten this man's name and work for months!

This is really interesting, thank you! I'm dreaming about followup then but for learning, with bite-sized text (or video?) plus opportunities to engage with the text, delivered to me (via email) on a regular basis so I don't have to remember to come back to it. But the future emails are contingent on my engagement so it's impossible to get behind. And it could use the anticipation of something new and exciting factor to keep me engaged. Really interesting to think about!

Also I'm thinking about The Little Schemer format and how it includes that engagement in the dialog and the frequent small opportunities to test your thinking.

How cool would it be to subscribe to a "book" and to get the next chapter I have to type out a brief reflection of what I've read so far? It would be up to me to decide how involved to make my "reflection" but it would be really cool to have that prompt.

I suppose blogs work in a similar way for people who read them as they come out and leave comments.

Definitely a lot to think about. This is fun! :)

I have better information retention from reading text in a book than on a Kindle/digital screen.

I'm not sure why, but turning the page and feeling a physical object seems to improve my memory. It might be wasteful, but it's often hard to beat the tactile sensation of books.

It improves your memory because it creates a stronger impression. There is more novelty in the experience of reading a physical book than an ebook in an e-reader. Ever notice how you have stronger memories of your first or second drive on some roads to some place than the later drives? After you've made the commute 100 times you find yourself at your office with no strong impression from anything that happened on the way unless there was something novel or eventful (like the suicidal deer that jumped in front of me yesterday)? An e-reader, even if it's a different text, ends up creating a similarly uniform and consistent experience that makes it harder to form the same kind of strong memories that a physical book tends to create. Each page is unique, the position in the book is actually conveyed properly (not just a small number in a corner or a progress bar at the top or bottom that you quickly learn to filter out), every book has a somewhat unique smell. It has weight and heft that also matter in the creation of the memories associated with reading it. Your e-reader will always be the same weight and have the same feeling in your hand no matter what book you're reading in it.

I mostly read ebooks now, but my main issue w/kindle and similar readers is that a lot of my retention is spatial. E.g I remember where physically something is in a book better than where in a reflowable document something is.

Sticking to a single, fixed size reader and avoiding changing font sizes helps solve some of that, but it's not quite the same.

I have had the same problem. Especially because going back a page on a Kindle can cause a reflow so words aren’t in the same position.

Have you had any luck turning on progress bars on your reader? Hasn’t helped me yet but I know I have a very good intuition on physical books for how far through the book a concept was. I can often just move directly to the area and then scan forward / backwards.

On my Kindle or iPad I find this hard.

Not as much as I'd like. I think losing the tactile idea of physically how far into a book something is loses a signal.

On the other hand I think there are potential opportunities there in more strongly visually signalling position in ways you can't with physical books (e.g. by strongly visually signposting locations in various ways), that I wish someone would experiment with.

The simplest answer is:

Well printed material is much easier to read and handle than anything electronic. Eink was a step in the right direction, but there's virtually no innovation in the interfaces of ereaders. Heck - even regular PDF readers on computers/phones have a fairly poor interface.

Screens shine when it comes to dynamic content - particularly videos of phenomena (animations of functions as you change the parameter, etc). However, being able to change the form factor of paper (not all books have the same size page), as well as the ease with which one can bend pages is really helpful. Nothing electronic has yet replaced my ability to flip back and forth between two pages.

Just so you know, the author is talking about books in the general sense. In fact he very strongly implies that he's only talking about e-books.

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