Text Is King
experimental-history.com
experimental-history.com
Not impossible, mind - the author posted this on Substack which is a way that one can monetize writing (blogpost style articles anyway).
Pre-printing press typically only the very wealthy had access to paper and ink, the process of copying a book was a huge undertaking.
Printing press opened things up, but paper was still rather expensive for quite some time. It wasn't until the 1900s that the book-splosion really took off.
With the take off of cheap paper products we switched from what you could write, to what could you get published and mass printed as the main gatekeeper. This paradigm stood for around 100 years.
With the rapid growth of both the internet and digital technology as a whole, anyone could write and 'publish online'. For a time this was lucrative as content was king and brought eyeballs. The internet was still slow enough for most that other forms of high bandwidth content were still luxury goods.
By 2010 the internet and smartphones were to the place that non-text media was where all the money was going. With the rise of the influencer a company could give a moderate amount of advertising dollars to an individual and get an oversized return on it. At the same time social media was gating off large amounts of text and people from the internet at large. Add to this the copying of text content in order to steal advertising dollars and clicks (think stack overflow copies and the like). Google and the other large social media companies with the advertising platforms greatly reduced the payout for text content and things moved to multi-media/video for the advertising dollar. The latest rage is shorts to keep ones ADHD addled mind locked to the screen for hours without moving.
With LLMs crapping out text who knows what our future of earning money with words looks like. Also, it's likely that AI driving virtual world will grab the attention of the masses, much like a personalized video game with the ability to be as addictive as our most dangerous drugs.
It's also ridiculously easy to cache (download a book in 9 seconds, board a transoceanic flight - no problem)
It also doesn't require the right sound and lighting conditions to see and understand a video (either those conditions, or good noise cancelling headphones - and now you're unaware of your surroundings)
It's also the only viable option on insanely low power devices which get months of battery life per charge.
It's also something you can read at an incredibly speedy pace if you are good at it and practice - though occasionally a decent audio/video player will be of use with this.
It's also something you can fall asleep while consuming, and tomorrow you won't have much trouble finding exactly where you left off.
I could continue..
On that note, a big thank you to whoever added "read this page" to Safari on iOS! Being able to turn long form articles into ad-hoc podcasts has been a game changer for me.
That's just a very long way of saying it's difficult to monetise; it's why audio and video are preferred by producers of content.
Few people are interested in disseminating an idea, a concept, anything... they are interested in levelling up their fame and followers. Text is typically no good for that.
That being said I love a good book over its movie version anyway. Because text is cheap there is so much more detail you can include. There is no way text can compete with the information density of a video.
If I have a text file and an audio file of the Great Gatsby, and I want do any of the following, then I'm going to use the text file:
* Find a particular quote
* Determine the number of times the word "Gatsby" is used
* Go back a few pages to remember exactly how something/someone was described
* Intermittently stop and compare with a supplementary file and/or write notes
* Find exactly where I was just before I fell asleep
* Get through it in 3 hours without rushing or missing bits
* Store it on a portable device along with thousands of other books
* Go back a few pages to remember exactly how something/someone was described
Or you don't forget how someone looks because a visual illustration is easier to remember
* Find exactly where I was just before I fell asleep
You can't, the book closed when you fell asleep and you forgot the bookmark . But when the phone fell it disconnected your headphones which stopped the playback.
So one can use the thousand words of pictures while most content is textual, whereas the other way is significantly worse, since it of course lacks all the searchability et al.
And writing system don't fall out of nowhere, especially something as baroque as English which is all but phonetic.
You could make a similar argument about, say, H.264, but the dominance is not as compelling and drops massively if you account for different container formats.
I think that today’s video influencers have gotten really good at “one take and done” recording.
I couldn’t do that. I’m way too much of a perfectionist. I always edit my text, and I’ve been writing all my life. I don’t think that I’ve ever written something perfectly, the first time (including HN comments. I tend to go back and edit for correctness and clarity).
A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed for a podcast. The process was fascinating, and the woman that did it, obviously does a great deal of editing and refinement. I don’t know if I have that much patience.
I mean, some of them are just rambling on and going more Vlog stuff. But even then they’ve likely already decided an agenda of discussion items and thoughts on them prior to just randomly going unfiltered.
Although idk, our algorithms of content could be completely different and you’re truly seeing something else.
Even short form video is a lot of work to be good at it and build a following unless there’s something else at play (charismatic, sex appeal, etc).
Almost everyone I talk to offline either reads fantasy, trashy romance, or feel-good self help books. I gotta tell ya, we all have our cheap pleasures now and then, but rarely do I meet anyone who reads anything remotely profound or thought-provoking. The only exception might be my father who reads a lot of historical fiction and non-fiction.
Maybe I'm just hanging in the wrong crowds.
In terms of the sources the author cites, exactly how much should we trust them? For example, book sales may have increased in recent years, but are people actually reading them? I remember a recent statistic where it turned out most people who buy vinyl records don't even own a record player; what if people are buying books so they can sit on a shelf?
And what's so special about books in particular, anyway? What's wrong with reading articles and webpages? I'd be more interested in whether those are declining since they are less tethered to entertainment, like books are.
I know lots of people who read books and articles. The people I know may not be a representative sample either, and the article is about US numbers and most people I know are not in the US.
It can be, but there has always been a lot of garbage like any art form. "The Well-Tempered Plot Device" is more than 40 years old now. https://news.ansible.uk/plotdev.html
And even the best authors are infested with "series-itis" and especially the fatal malady "series incompletus".
My sci-fi/fantasy reading habit broke because I refused to start any series that wasn't finished. Suddenly, 99% of sci-fi/fantasy disappeared.
My only hope for David Gerrold to finish the "War Against the Chtorr" series is for him to have notes that he hands to someone else. The last book was 36 years ago! Don't complain to me about George R. R. Martin. Amateurs.
Concentration is a skill that needs to be practiced. A book is the easiest way to practice that skill.
Concentration is a skill that is useful broadly in human endeavors. I'll leave it to the social scientists to document the general damage that a lack of concentration does.
I can tell how much damage gets done depending upon the length since I last read a book. If I go a couple of months between books because of interruptions, my reading speed drastically slows down and my patience is really compromised. I didn't notice this happen before the rise of cell phones. Back then, a couple months of interruptions didn't seem to slow my reading speed much at all.
Nothing, really, but I suspect that is declining too. I read historical books mostly, some 4-5 per year. Like last time I ordered "Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWS", in English because unfortunately it wasn't yet translated in my native language. But other than that I still read printed magazines. One that my father used to read so I picked the habit from him and used to be weekly but now it's bi-monthly because ... fewer readers. And I read a ton of online articles.
But you can notice the repeating pattern: read, read, read. Because I got good at it waay before there was an alternative, and because of that, the alternative has supplanted but never replaced the original. But my kid? Never read anything in his life that wasn't forced upon him. And the whole new generation is like this. He can read because can't function in the modern world without it but reading as primary source of gathering information? No chance.
I suspect this gets us back to medieval times where there are a few erudites and lots of imbeciles, my son included.
Although part of that I’m sure is that as I’m visually impaired, reading physical books is far more tiring than reading off a screen where I can make the text the exact size I want.
Used to be a voracious reader as a kid (though 99% non-fiction).
Now, I read the New Yorker which I had a pile of half read issues. There's one at the table where I eat, one in the loo, one on the couch, and when my brain gets tired of staring at the wall... I pick up a copy when I don't want to do anything particularly creative.
Finishing a good New Yorker article, or a book laying by my bed often expands my worldview, my vocabulary, and my understanding of current events. Reading a ton of comments online has never really produced that same experience even in a place like HackerNews which has (IMO) much higher quality comments than many places.
So you can get back into it! And it seems to be like riding a bike, very easy to get back into. And the more I read, the more I'm happy I'm reading.
I can objectively/rationally, see the appeal but I feel the world is a lesser place for it. There's a lack of something I can't quite articulate, maybe personality (not quite but something like that), that makes for a less fulfilling.
It's sort like Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which is one of the finest texts humanity has imo. And the best bit for me is, the turtle crossing the road. Yes, there's some symbolism, but its largely a pointless interlude; in the sense that in another version of the universe, there's an editor out there who would have cut that bit, and it wouldn't have affected the story too significantly. Yet something incredible would have been lost.
Though having said that, if the ultimate goal of writing is to transfer one person’s experience of human thought to another, then the filler often makes sense. They’re trying to take you on the same mental journey that they went on. At least that’s the good-faith interpretation.
I think filler is also akin to the difference in experience between listening to an audiobook at 1x speed vs say 3x speed. The slower pace gives your brain time to work.
But I totally agree, once you know a bunch about a subject the filler becomes unnecessary.
Teaching is art and not science in spite of what so many tech folks think. If I'm teaching a hard subject, I don't know a priori what will click with each student. I'm trying to give you multiple tools for you to try to use while working on problems to get you to your next level of understanding. Some of those tools are idiosyncratic to my experience and not in the textbook. Most of my suggestions are going to wind up being useless to a particular student, but I'm hoping that at least one of them connects properly.
For example, the biggest complaint of linear algebra students is "This is boring and doesn't have any use." Well, I can talk about how its used in graphics, but the mathematicians will call that filler. I can talk about solving differential equation systems for the engineers, but the CS students will call that filler. The instructor, of course, thinks all that stuff is filler and would rather get back to teaching the subject, but understands that getting people interested and enthusiastic is a part of the teaching process.
2) The "filler" part of "traditional" media is completely different for each person while "social" media filler is useless to everybody.
This is something that so many people don't seem to grasp. Each individual will fixate on and take something different from a book or lecture. That's good. As long as each part of media resonates and has a purpose with somebody consuming it, it's not "filler".
The problem is that "social" media rewards behaviors that create useless "filler". So, social media is in a war--people get more sensitive to ignoring useless filler; the social media sites ramp more aggressive garbage; people get more sensitive; lather, rinse, repeat.
The problem is that your social media "useless filler" pattern matcher learns to be super aggressive and classifies anything that doesn't immediately engage with you, personally and immediately as garbage. That's fine when doomscrolling; that's not fine when reading a book or listening to a lecture.
That's not to say that there aren't poor lectures or poor quality books. There very definitely are. And you should definitely leave those behind.
However, you need to turn those super aggressive filler filters off when an author or lecturer is genuinely trying to engage you in good faith. If an author or lecturer did the work, is well-prepared, and is making solid points and progress, you need give them the leeway to do their job.
It's hard for me to get into books nowadays. But if I manage to get through a few pages, the momentum carries me through.
I don't hate reading. I just have trouble starting.
About just every end of day, when I go to kiss my wife and my kid (11 years old) when they go to their respective beds, they're both reading a book.
A book is compliant with a "no screens before bed / no screens in the bedroom" policy and that's very particular.
It's also a real physical item that shall working without needing to be recharged, that shall keep working when the Internet is down, that won't disappear when the site is blocked for whatever reason, etc.
A lot of profound and thought-provoking concepts can be, and are, conveyed in a TikTok. It used to be you couldn't profit off super short content.
It's also very flexible in that I can immediately return to a previous sentence without needing intermediate steps like rewinding a video or audio format. I can copy parts into another document for reasons. It's easier to search. This is also what makes learning from a book so much better than video (besides not needing batteries for it).
But that is far far harder to judge your progress and ability on compared to copying a text over and seeing if you can keep the same structure and rhythm. The proliferation of cameras have changed this some, of course. But it used to be a thing that you would try and rewrite from memory some poems that you were studying for school.
Oddly, what is really killing this, I think, is the new idea that so much in life should be permanent. Notebooks are where you think outloud and you should expect most of your thoughts to be transient and not worry about holding on to them. Computers completely break that with people wanting a permanent and indexed collection of all of their thoughts.
> besides not needing batteries for it
https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v044n01_...
Let us say that you want to analyze, say, drinking culture in Ireland. You could write documentary on it, or do a fictional character study. However, those require actors, camera equipment, editing tools and time, and it generally extremely expensive and time consuming. A quick TikTok video may be a bit cheaper than a full-scale film, but still needs some of that equipment and cinematography skills.
Music is not much better. You need skills in singing, translating ideas of rhythmic lyrics, as well as supplies for instruments.
Writing, however, is simple. At minimum, all you need is paper and skill in articulating ideas. Almost anyone worthy to rationally ponder a topic already has the skills to put it to paper (assuming that they have gone through a proper First-World education and know reading and writing).
Text is also one of the easiest to share. A picture is worth a thousand words, but that poses problems in sending all that information. Plain text, however (or even most rich-text formats) can be transferred to anyone over almost any protocol, even rudimentary ones such as word-of-mouth. Ideas shared through text can be sent at an unrivaled pace.
You can't expect anyone to view 20 million videos a day to find trends in current day video discourse. In theory machines could do it, but it costs a fortune. But 20 million text transcripts? That's doable on someone's local machine.
Google has this all for themselves, but they don't seem to give anyone else the ability to access the data easily so the last two points are a yes for them and a no for you.
Talking has always been superior to text, and most of the problems of industrialized society is that the majority of people have become psychotic brained by thinking that the written word is higher than the spoken word. The spoken word is of course superior, and has always been.
Writing is not dying and is not going to die anytime soon, people use it more than they ever have for communication in this texting and emailing world and writing will be continued to be used for those areas where it is undeniable king. What can explore the inner world of people better than the written word? what can develop and explore idea to the extent and depth of the written word? All those unfilmable books that keep being read are works which exploit the strengths of the written word to express things which no other medium can without a great deal of abstraction and becoming so experimental that only a tiny niche can appreciate them and a much smaller niche than the niche that is literature.
Even then, smart people will care about dissecting ideas, explore new concepts and broaden their understanding - and for most of it, Text Is King.
Sure, LLMs can understand images and video, but when you make your program spit debug text you make it easier and faster for Claude Code to iterate on it and fix any problems.
See how much value does a text UI program like Claude Code provide, it really doesn't need anything else than cannot be done in a terminal.
I strongly disagree with this.
Claude-code would be super-powered if it had a better grasp of running processes without logging output. Imagine if it could somehow directly trace running programs, spotting exceptions and gauging performance in real-time.
It would be super-powered if it could actually navigate around a code-base and refactor through language servers without having to edit files through search & replace.
Imagine if instead of code, the program was first compiled to an Abstract Syntax Tree and claude worked directly on that AST instead of code.
Never a misplaced semi-colon* or forgotten import directive.
It needs a fundamentally different model to an LLM to operate it, but I'm convinced that thinking that Text is the endgame is a form of blub.
It's where we are now, and it's working very well, but it shouldn't be considered the long term goal. We can do better.
* To be fair, this one hasn't been an issue for a while now.
In short, the article focuses only on the amount of reading, but the content is also important. This should be part of the equation.
As we're referencing young adults here, they already have a degree of understanding of the world today. Reading of the past, gives historical context to how the world is today, to why the world is as it is today. I'd have hoped they'd been well exposed to such things in school, and you can be absolutely sure they've been exposed to such things in movies, or music (have you heard some rap music?), or.. you know, this thing called the Internet.
In 12 seconds I can find more untoward content on the Internet, than I could in an entire library or book store.
So this isn’t new and I don’t see the problem.
As for the “views,” by this standard kids shouldn’t read A Tale of Two Cities because it encourages beheadings.
So there’s that anacdote.
But that said, the first two were great books and I'll get back to the third book once I've finished my non-fiction cycle. (I tend to go back and forth lol)
are they? maybe it's a cultural thing or maybe the author's perspective is from 1st world countries. here where I live ppl can't stand reading books on digital devices (not counting tech bros in my N)