Reading

I like to think of it it with the question: what is to reading what a text-editor is to typing? Social features for sure. We could also experiment with crazy stuff like SYNTACTIC SPACING. Here's an illustration on a paragraph from Doug Englebart's Augmenting Human Intellect:

Reading is alluring. It has a nameless quality beyond satisfying desires for information and pleasure. Despite more colorful and interactive media, reading text somehow remains more refined, more seductive.

The one thing I do try to follow is to go on streaks of reading a lot of books on a particular topic around the same time. Doing this is useful because it means I don’t have to just trust one author’s perspective on a particular topic, and it helps me connect a lot of facts together, so I can understand things better.

The hotnewtheory online is that reading is kaput, and therefore civilization is too. The rise of hyper-addictive digital technologies has shattered our attention spans and extinguished our taste for text. Books are disappearing from our culture, and so are our capacities for complex and rational thought. We are careening toward a post-literate... See more