Hacker News Reader

I'm slightly alarmed by this, not just because of the decline of literacy and the slower speed of transmission, but the stronger charisma effects through voice seem to me to be a driver of problems. That seems to be why there are so many terrible influencer cult leaders.

Part of me has the same concerns, as I love books and think reading is critical. However, I also realize that reading and books are a technology that has developed through history, like anything else, and that a yet-unseen format of the future (that incorporates video, text, audio, etc.) may be more effective than reading. I don't actually think reading is a great way of communication, it's more just evolutionarily fit compared to speech.

" I don't actually think reading is a great way of communication, it's more just evolutionarily fit compared to speech."

This is a very baffling thing to say. Its like saying "I don't think fish gills are an effective form of breathing for fish, but it just happened to evolve like that." Reading and writing is an amazing way to communicate things that need to span time. Street signs, postcards, books, literally everything around you that is man made likely has some form of writing on it.

Reading/writing obviously has limitations...like it is difficult to interpret tone in many of these HN comments...but that is hardly a nail in the coffin of the form of communication.

My point is that the average person doesn’t actually like to read and would rather watch a video or listen to audio. The number of hours spent scrolling TikTok or YouTube absolutely dwarfs the number of hours people spend reading books for pleasure. This is…basic sociological knowledge about contemporary society and really not a controversial thing to say at all. People read much less today than they used to.

Writing is more durable than it is desirable, and as its durability is matched by video and digital devices, I expect its presence to lessen.

Why the strawman? Your claim of the average person not liking to read and what we are actually discussing of reading/writing being a good form of communication are two different things.

Plenty of people like lots of bad things because we have monkey brains, stop thinking that just because a group likes something, it is good. I watch the behavior day in and day out...people watch HOURS of content per day, and at the end they have synthesized almost none of it. A majority of social video and audio is just a way for people to entertain themselves and a buffer against being alone with their thoughts. I wholeheartedly agree that audio and video can be great learning and communication tools. To say that is what is happening on a majority of social media is extremely misguided.

I am describing what I see as a societal shift and commenting on it. You are making this (and your other comment) into some moralistic activist argument, which is entirely missing the point and frankly just uninteresting. As I said, it’s not about what is better, it’s what ends up being used by people that drives culture.

Adding to that: the critique of writing has a long history going back all the way to Plato. This is not a new topic.

What is uninteresting is your weak spine in succumbing to "societal inertia", without considering what is possibly good or bad, just what is. You clearly don't know what you're describing because you're just flip flopping between 2 things. Just read your comments back in a couple of hours and you'll understand.

Like I actually can't understand how your argument is: "people are watching more videos, therefore reading is bad". Did you even think that through?

You really don’t seem to understand that one can observe things separately from passing judgment on them. It’s a basic principle of science. I don’t know why you seem to have such a hard time understanding this, but judging by your hostile remarks in every comment, you just want to argue.

And in case this isn’t already crystal clear (and apparently it isn’t for you): I like books. I like reading. I have studied the history of the printing press and the book much, much more you have, I assure you. I find the transition of technology fascinating and think the internet and video is a similar revolution to the printing press. That is what my comment is about, not your puerile attempt to make me seem like I don’t like reading.

And here we are, the HN consumers, reading(!) the comments. No videos or pictures. I mention this to support your comment, that there are people who like to read, and learn from reading, but it requires more time, more involvement, and more imagination. We are a minority? Few have that luxury, and inclination - it turns out, so the massive onslaught of easy, entertainment. One music video can have 500 million viewers. I don't know how many viewers of HN there are, but, I doubt it's a million. It is interesting to see where (and how) the information flow goes from here on.

For sure, I love HN and love reading. But if we’re honest here, it’s a niche thing. A random TikTok video gets more views than a link that’s on the HN front page all day.

> they don't really read as the default anymore, in the sense of reading longform blog posts/articles/newspapers

Did they ever? I grew up with newspapers, but adults back then were saying much the same then just with books as their example of "things kids don't read these days"[0], to the extent that my mum decided she ought to bribe me to read more[1]. But I also remember reading some claim that most people back then were reading just the headlines of newspapers, and if they were particularly engaged by that, perhaps the first/last paragraphs too.

[0] right before Harry Potter came out.

[1] I can't remember exactly how much any more, but I got at least a few week's worth of pocket money from the New Testament.

Yes, they did, even if they were reading pulp novels and not classic literature.

I am the "they" in the case of last generations' "kids these days".

What "kids these days" do and don't do has always been a subject of parental concern, but the reality is that people aren't a homogenous group, and being an adult makes you more aware of people who grow up differently than you did.

Just as my mum was concerned about my reading habits (she probably saw a headline about it), so too are you concerned about the current generation's.

My generation was all over the place, and so is today's. The top readers of my generation read widely, most adults when I was a kid didn't read more than the headline; The top readers of the current generation read widely, most adults today don't read more than the headline… and even here, we get comments where people clearly comment without having read the link.

There is pretty reliable data that says people read less today. It's not just the "parents complain about their kids" fallacy.

P != NP.

Link and everyone can look, but I sure 'ain't gonna search for this "reliable data" and then try to figure out if what I find is or isn't, in fact, reliable.

I think it is not that people don't like reading.

It is just that video content generate so much more monetization. At least compared to work done. Thus most relevant content is generated as video instead of text. And those generating text are struggling with revenue sources.

I think if you asked people under the age of thirty what they prefer, 90% are going to choose video over books.

Maybe not books. But let's ask would they prefer video to check ingredients in a recipe or a textual article? Or maybe video instead of wikipedia page to verify some facts...

Similar things go to many things that would clearly be superior as text, but there simply isn't that much money in something user will quickly skim over. Instead of forced pre-roll adds and sponsorships.

Definitely I think younger people prefer TikTok cooking videos to bloated recipe websites.

If you're a new creator and don't have family with good media connections, then YouTube is pretty much the only way that you can actually get paid for what you make. Regardless of medium.

Anybody tell me what are the other realistic options?

I don't know where you get that idea from. But humans has been reading for thousands of years. And on a cognitive level reading is superior to video or sound. Tons of evidence has been based on that premise.

It has nothing to do with young people and a sudden change in human patience. If your young ones are impatient of they read something is disturbing them, but it's definitely not human evolution.

Reading as a mass culture phenomenon is absolutely not thousands of years old and mass literacy didn't exist in a lot of places a mere century or two ago. Even today, you'd be surprised at how most people have very basic literacy skills.

And on a cognitive level reading is superior to video or sound.

I'm pretty skeptical of that claim, but even if it's true, it doesn't really matter if reading is better than watching a video if people prefer to watch videos.

I also specifically said it's not an issue of impatience, but rather a fundamental shifting of media formats.

Why would it not matter? You think just because a mass group prefers one thing, it will have good outcomes? Will/are your kids glued to screens 24/7 because others prefer it? Seems like you may be a lost cause already.

And maybe mass literacy hasn't been around for millenia, but written form of communication and story telling certainly has.

It wouldn't matter because society is already orienting itself towards a screen-first world. Parents that force their kids to read books and not use screens are almost certainly a minority.

Seems like you may be a lost cause already.

Not sure what this is supposed to mean. I'm describing what I perceive to be a societal shift, not my personal thoughts on whether I think it's good or bad.

It literally matters that people fight that urge. It almost never takes a majority to turn the tide of a movement(and I am not advocating for any extremes). There needs to be some kind of balance. If a parent is "forcing" their child to read books or to be curious about the world, something has gone awry earlier on. I know plenty of parent who limit screen time, let their kids play outside, and do so themselves, but that is all anecdotal and does not represent the average experience.

I guess it "wouldn't matter" if in 50 years everyone is just a mush brain on their couch scrolling TikTok getting fed through a brain tube. Yeah...hard to see how it "wouldn't matter".

Video? How quaint. Why not simply translate the latent representation of concepts.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to communicate here, but: the average person likes watching/listening to other people talk. Maybe the über cyborg AI gods of the future will communicate directly with mental models, but for everyone else, the only thing that is better than video is probably a hologram, which is basically the same thing taken to the next level.

Just commenting on your timelines. They are a bit on the short side considering the rapid pace of technology.

As sad as it is, video is already a preferred and main content format for most people. It always was. The closer to reality, the more engaging [EDIT: and easier to digest] the content. We had some text renaissance due to technical limitations, but that's over already. Beginner programmers now routinely shun written content in favor of video - how contradictory is that? But that's how it is right now.

Writing as a mode of communication requires effort on both the creator and consumer sides. That effort has many positive side effects, which is why some people still favor it [EDIT: and will favor it for a long time in the future, until something genuinely better shows up]. The problem is that, no matter what, effort is still effort, and people generally don't like to exhaust themselves. Gyms would be chock-full, and we'd have no obesity problem if it weren't so.

Your "century from now" estimate is extremely optimistic, to the point of being completely divorced from reality. If I had to bet, I'd say we will lose most textual content from mainstream consumption in the next 5 to 10 years. My guess is that writing will become the equivalent of today's HTML and JavaScript: a source code to be interpreted by the machine to produce a visual representation that people will consume. It'll disappear into the background and will only be touched by professionals.

I wouldn't be surprised if we just had a AI "assistant", or "friend". That would explain things for you if they need explaining. Like who to vote for, or what brand of stimulant to buy. The "friend" that vibes with you best would be the one you trust the most. Assuming corporations would be interested to cater to a bunch of unemployables that is.