The Cliffs Notes paradox

The reason we’re so increasingly intolerant of long articles and why we skim them, why we skip forward even in a short video that reduces a 300-page book into a three-minute animation — even in that we skip forward — is that we’ve been infected with this kind of pathological impatience that makes us want to have the knowledge but not do the work of... See more

Text in books are fixed, permanent Books represent authority. Screens are fluid, dynamic, never finished (Wikipedia is a great example). There’s no authority to tell you the truth. You have to assemble your own truth

Book people, relax. I’m not looking to replace reading-for-pleasure with cheap AI-generated summaries. They’re hollow and void of joy. I don’t want the Spark Notes. I want the obscure excerpts hidden in Chapter 13, written in elegant prose, and eerily related to my exact stream of thought. They’re just impossible to find at the right moment. Can al... See more