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Being a Better Online Reader

newyorker.com

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In my opinion all that hand-wringing about people no longer reading long text misses a crucial point: long writing was necessary only where quick contextualisation was impossible, i.e. before the invention of the web, search engines etc. Books had to be long to give the reader the context so the key idea of the text can easily be communicated. Hence long text is a consequence of technological flaws of the previously dominant platform for text distribution, printing.

The availability of the net, linking, search technology from google to grep has changed all that. Not surprisingly, digital natives move away from long text.

We should be happy that information transmission has become a tiny bit less painful. That's not to say that there isn't a place for long, continuous text, but it should be more an exception than the norm.

That's a very good point. Thanks.

"...long writing was necessary only where quick contextualisation was impossible"

Adler and Doren's "How to Read a Book" covers quick contextualization; there were techniques and ideas about this starting in the early 70s, most of which is still very relevant and I've found very useful in my own reading life.

That book is anything but quick.

Here's a summary of the book I found more useful than the book itself: http://www.oxfordtutorials.com/How%20to%20Read%20a%20Book%20...

I agree with your point but I also understand why people who spent their whole life crafting long texts are confused by the new situation. If I would have spent 30 years in the newspaper industry I wouldn't want to switch to confer information with slides/html5/photoshop/programs/videos. It's just so far off from what makes a good writer.

Hmmm. I wonder if quick one search stops allow us to cherry pick articles which we presuppose our world views.

I know I've done it.

Perhaps lengthy reading isn't necessary but the ability to focus sure is and I personally am of the opinion that they probably correlate (although I have no evidence).

Reading a 15 page New Yorker article exposes me to perspectives I'd never have seen. Do quick google searches do that?

There are some subjects where quick context is adequate or even optimal - coding and cooking have a lot of uses for quick snippets of knowledge - but there are many, many subjects where deep context is necessary if you want to achieve anything beyond cursory knowledge of the basic facts, let alone expertise. I dare say that someone that's read a book about, say, any given historical era or person, has a better understanding of it than anybody that's done all of their reading on wikipedia.

>> I dare say that someone that's read a book about, say, any given historical era or person, h

Usually history books are on the one hand, so full of details that you'll probably never remember, and on the other hand, rarely condense the context and present patterns and abstractions of the issue .

And unlike technical books , they are pretty awful at just-in-time learning(like just answering a specific question about history), which is an important mode of learning/knowing.

So if you count in long-term understanding and general usefulness, most historical books aren't that great.

So are you saying the Wikipedia reader might have a stronger grasp of historical subjects?

I chose history because it's dense on details, so a decent measure of a medium's ability to impart deep knowledge of a domain - a strongly written narrative is thus a powerful tool for bringing together a deluge of facts and figures in a comprehensible and memorable way.

And whether or not "most" history books are unreadable is irrelevant to the savvy reader, because the internet has also made it exceedingly easy to find the best books on any subject written by people highly skilled at putting together the most memorable and insightful narrative with the most relevant, up-to-date facts.

If we're talking about mediums for history,not sure about wikipedia, but i think an high-quality, high volume forum witha good search , like reddit.com/r/askhistorians [1] is a great one , better than books in many cases.

And yes, maybe some books solve this, but it's very rare as far as i've noticed. There's something about books, also evident in non-fiction that makes people write too much unneeded stuff.

[1]It's far better to search this forum using google, using site:reddit.com/r/askhistorians

Thanks for the recommendation but haven't you just pointed me to a forum of heavy book readers? Every top answer I've read cites a book or a long form journal article as its source. If you wanted to know one specific thing, I'm sure this is a great resource (sincerely: thanks!), but I doubt the posters themselves would recommend their own posts over the authoritative books they cite if you wanted to develop anything like deep knowledge on a given topic.

This might be a great place to start, but if you actually wanted to make your own deep connections about history or substantial ideas or wanted to understand the economic/cultural/political/technical origins of well anything, I'm astounded that people think they can cobble that from websites, let alone ones that are decidedly not long form.

I agree with all of the above. However, strange as it is, I have started appreciating really good long-form writing lately. I really enjoy nautil.us, the site that is always posting their long-form articles on here, to the point that I got a subscription. I also enjoy long form essays on Medium and Quanta magazine seems to have some good stuff as well. That's just been my personal evolving experience with reading in the last 2-3 years.

I find it difficult to read longer articles on a computer, mostly because it's so easy to get distracted by so many things - other links in the page, other tabs in the browser and other apps open on the desktop. I tend to get easily distracted reading printed books, however. Mostly my thoughts will wander, or if I'm outside somewhere I'll get distracted by some sort of external stimuli.

I was actually thinking this morning, it'd be great if I could have some sort of mode in Chrome that shows only the article I wanted to read, in full-screen, with nothing else visible. And to encourage me to read the article to the end before changing task, I wouldn't be able to change the tab (via CTRL-tab or CTRL-pageUp/down), I would only be able to close the tab. I'm actually not 100% sure this would help, but it would be an interesting experiment.

My solution for that is to read on my Kobo... Whenever an article seems like interesting enough to warrant reading, I add it to pocket and then read it on my ereader...

It's more comfortable and less distracting

FYI, recent versions of Firefox include a reader view.

> I find it difficult to read longer articles on a computer, mostly because it's so easy to get distracted by so many things - other links in the page, other tabs in the browser and other apps open on the desktop.

In this case Richard Stallman-style "web browsing" might be better. :-)

> "We read more quickly when lines are longer, but only to a point. When lines are too long, it becomes taxing to move your eyes from the end of one to the start of the next. We read more efficiently when text is arranged in a single column rather than multiple columns or sections. The font, color, and size of text can all act in tandem to make our reading experience easier or more difficult. And while these variables surely exist on paper just as they do on-screen, the range of formats and layouts online is far greater than it is in print. Online, you can find yourself transitioning to entirely new layouts from moment to moment, and, each time you do so, your eyes and your reading approach need to adjust. Each adjustment, in turn, takes mental and physical energy."

Huh, I never thought of considering changing typography a context switch[0], but it makes perfect sense. I guess that's why I like using the Readable bookmarklet to standardise the typography of any article I read.

http://readable.tastefulwords.com/

It's pretty easy to tweak too: I keep changing fonts every now and then, whenever I find one that is more easy on the eyes. By now I have six different versions bookmarked:

- two for print (Serif, small & large print)

- two for reading during the day (Sans, black text on white background, different font sizes)

- two for reading in the evening/at night (Sans, light grey text on dark grey background, different font sizes)

[0]: Outside of computer science, "context switch" has been adopted in the Interaction Design community (at least the one I'm in) to apply to humans too - a well-structured UI requires less context switches of its user. It's a pretty spot-on analogy in many situations.

Now a days I read mostly in kindle as it is convenient. I really miss flipping pages to scan and go to a part in an earlier chapter for quick reference - navigation is so inefficient in e-readers.

Here's an idea. Every paragraph should include a button saying "I'm lost". When pressing the button, the user should be automatically taken back to the most appropriate place in the document to continue reading.

Anyone aware of evidence on comprehension & retention of audiobooks? Obviously that medium is not ideal for all subject matter but I've been recently listening to a mix of fiction & non-fiction and found I'm immersing myself much more than on paper or screen.

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