>And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.
I think this argument misses a potentially deeper point about the true magical power of reading...
I did resonate with the majority of the piece, however.
I think this argument misses a potentially deeper point about the true magical power of reading...
I did resonate with the majority of the piece, however.
While text offers great features, large blocks of it are a mode of communication that is falling out of popular use with good reason as today's world is hyper-connected and people access media more purposefully. They often come to media seeking clarity around a particular concept. In short, they usually seek objective reference information (even if it's for some highly specific issue), rather than opine. Long-form, OTOH, provides background reasoning and opine. It may be well structured and correct, but it's not the target semantic category for most itches that need to be scratched.
This situation is compounded by globalization. Particularly in English, the general level of literacy is falling. Larger vocabularies and complex grammatical structures are no longer comprehensible to the majority of English readers, who are non-native.
While one could challenge PG to rewrite his essays as i18n infographics, perversely this would make autonomous translation more difficult due to rasterization of text. Quip: Perhaps HTML+CSS+SVG for less-text diagramming is the upcoming communicative norm? Abstract concepts rendered as IKEA-instructions through PC genericized cuddle-bugs. It's a thing on twitter, I know.
As programmers, at least when working on complex systems, we actually break large ideas in to smaller ones and use the least powerful language to tackle each of them. There is something to be said for carrying this philosophy to all communications.
I love a good quote, or aphorism, or copy-pasta'd thought technology as much as anyone. But there's profound power in understanding ideas well enough to re-formulate them in your own words, maybe even without referencing their origins. Best way to do that is practice, practice, practice.