Author talks of text as abstraction compared to "edited" version of reality of visual media. But videos, movies, TV shows are also abstractions, possibly worse in that they more easily trick our subconscious into perceiving them as more real than words on a page while still being constructions of a "reality" based on the creator's point of view. So people think they have an understanding of the world based on fictionalized entertainment and tropes they've experienced thousands of times from screens.
Think of any time someone makes a political argument, or comments on a particular aspect of human nature by referencing something they saw in a movie. I think this is odd, at least if over done, as if the constructed media representation is somehow evidence of anything true. As if people don't have to have real lived experience of some phenomena as long as they watched something about it in a show or whatever.
Reminds me of Baudrillard's "hyperreality" [0] concept, where constructed media becomes "more real than real", here's an excellent presentation summarizing the idea [1]
Sidney Lumet's film "Network" (1976) explores the idea of "hyperreality" in an accessible way, where people model their lives in reaction to relationships shown on television.
>"I think this is odd, at least if over done, as if the constructed media representation is somehow evidence of anything true"
Constructed media representations, like clips of movies, can still be quite useful for introducing an idea where the evidence will be presented later on. For example, some research psychologists use clips from Ratatouille to introduce concepts about memory.
However, I agree that it's unfortunate that people sometimes do uncritically use fictional depictions as evidence of arguments for human nature. For example, Lord of the Flies depicted a highly pessimistic view of how shipwrecked boys would behave over time, and people have formed a cynical worldview from the story. A real-life case of shipwrecked boys in 1965, however, ended with cooperation: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...
Lord of the Flies was a satire on a popular genre of books where rich, upper-class, white kids ended up in exotic locales and not only survived but thrived, including teaching the primitive natives how to do civilization. So basically satire on pro-colonial propaganda.
Absolutely, no question. And personally I love film as an art form and even I fall into the trap of referencing film as some model for the real world.
It's hard to articulate the nuance but visual media/art certainly still exist in the real world, and we have to account for whatever it is they communicate to us, and it is something. There can be something real and reflective that comes from them, some insight on the human condition and (maybe less trustworthy) historical accounts of events.
It is just that to the degree something is visual and contains moving images seems to correlate with how much people perceive it as strictly factual or direct representation of reality. Whereas with books and texts people seem to have a healthy arms-length relationship with it being a depiction of a constructed reality or an abstraction. I think there are studies that sharing an experience watching a movie has a significant emotional response amongst viewers where that's similar to real life event. It fools your brain better than other forms. And since we live amidst near infinite quantity of films and shows, while people's actual lived experience of certain types of human struggle in developed world are less than in past, the disconnect of hyperreality becomes greater.
Indeed. I've lost count of the number of times I've come across the"Argument by webcomic" fallacy: the notion that somehow one's argument is unshakeable compared to a simple declaration of it, because it's been presented as a webcomic interaction or as an infographic.
Really well put, especially in regards to the notion that the less obvious mode of abstraction of visual media increases the risk that we mistake it for reality.
You’re right, the written word or visual depiction is still the result of human intentions, and I don’t think the process is very different between the two. This is coming from a writer’s perspective, so I guess I will state my bias.
I've regretted hours spent watching TV, playing computer games, trying to figure out how to complete a task with no information available, being stuck waiting somewhere with nothing to do, but I can't think of a case I've regretted time spent reading. There may be people in the world whose lives would be improved by reading less, but I'm guessing a vanishingly small number.
I have noticed that when I spend a lot of time reading dystopian fiction, the sense of despair from that dystopia creeps into how I react to real-life. Not all fiction seems to work like that for me, but that style in particular leaves me looking up and going "Whoa," as I readjust to reality. So I do get where the author is coming from here; I think if you spend a significant part of your life in any constructed universe (whether that's Gilligan's Island, Fallout, or Harry Potter), you're inevitably going to start adapting to that universe at least a little bit.
The typical dystopian novel envisaged states of complete surveillance and technology turning against humanity. This is far more possible now with internet and AI than it was in the 50s, and we're already seeing the very same technologies envisaged in those novels being created and turned against humanity right on point (drones, surveillance, loss of privacy, mass media manipulation, etc).
It's not a statement about life being better or worse than the 50s per se; that can be debated. But we're definitely in a far more "dystopian" state of affairs than we were in the 50s.
The author seems to be focused on low-quality reading, both in terms of the material itself and in terms of habits formed while giving the material the (scant) attention it deserves. He says we encounter almost half a million words daily. No one is giving that stuff a deep reading, or should.
The culprit is probably work. Think of how much of the typical office job involves ingesting low-quality information at high speed. The jobs aren't mentally taxing, but they do burn you out from serious reading, because of all the time wasted on peoples' shitty emails. You basically need to become a skimmer to survive modern life, especially if you work an office job, and there's a nonzero amount of mental effort in code switching from serious reading to half-assed work email reading.
I've regretted reading many times in the past. Case in point - this site wasting hours of my time, as well as plenty of stories that I just couldn't tear myself away from even though it was hours past bed o'clock causing exhaustion.
> can't think of a case I've regretted time spent reading
Hmm, as an inexperienced youth I read - and believed - stuff that I now recognize as totally poisonous crap.
Putting someone else's thoughts in your brain should be better regulated. There used to be censorship, abolishing it was probably a bad idea. Yes, I know how we've been conditioned about that. Sort of proves my point.
> Hmm, as an inexperienced youth I read - and believed - stuff that I now recognize as totally poisonous crap.
Sometimes you have to read crap in order to realize it's crap.
Fortunately, over time, it seems that we develop a certain "smell" for books. I am very picky about what I read nowdays, and my "hunch" for good books seem to be mostly accurate.
Here’s my hot take: because of the deeply held cultural belief that screen time is bad and books are good.
Certainly there are truths behind that, but I think we need to realize that videos and even video games can be informative, uplifting, moving, etc, just like books. And conversely books can be a huge waste of time.
I think it also helps that, with reading, you usually have one book in front of you. There are no "related books" vying for your attention in the sides of the page. This is more true for physical books.
Re: "deeply held cultural belief that screen time is bad" - I agree that's likely part of it, and that belief probably isn't as rooted in fact as it might be.
Not sure I can say I've experienced a computer game that I could say has come close to being as enlightening or life-changing as a book (though I have met people through playing them that have changed my life, which counts for something).
TV is entertainment, and certainly the free-to-air stuff only exists because it keeps you glued to the screen long enough to absorb the ads that pay for it, and even relatively low-brow stuff (think, uh, Two & half Men, or I dunno, Gossip Girl) can still be oddly addictive and a huge time suck in a way that poorly written books etc. never are, because I far more quickly put them down and find something better to read.
I think it’s just like the difference of being spoon fed some yoghurt compared to having a full course dinner. That being said I still find YouTube better than Netflix, or worse, TV in that regard - at least you chose the yoghurt and some of it is actually pretty healthy (e.g. some of the top notch educational content).
> What would your grasp of the outside world feel like? Over time, increasingly abstract and dreamlike. Even those with whom you had regular contact would increasingly become simplified, abstracted, flattened characters.
I'm going to stop you right there and point out that many people living in the 18th and 19th centuries developed the vast majority of their relationships and understandings of the world through only text in the form of letter writing. And I have found no reason to believe the people of those eras lacked in the intimacies of their relations nor in their understanding of their own world. Certainly not compared to the multimedia deluged generations of the mid to late 20th century.
Books are the original metaverse. Are we spending too much time in worlds in our head and not enough in real life?
There was a slum in Varna in the 90s with shacks made of tin and cardboard and most of them had satellite dishes on top. The need to escape physical circumstances and real-world stress is real. The part that's missing is boredom that allows you to create something others wouldn't have created. If you make room for that, despite all the pleasures, you are not leaving the world as a visitor, but as a contributor.
Nice riff on Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death". The focus is
really on the danger of over-reliance on one faculty. But I suppose
the same could be said for an aural-only world of radio and podcasts.
I disagreed that video would be an edited "reality". Image is no more
than the way the world looks as opposed to how it sounds or is
described by text. Ultimately the ability to synthesise these
faculties is what the phrase "common sense" really means. It isn't a
stand-in for "bleedin obvious" or "what most (common) people think",
it is that sense that emerges from an ability to create a world from
sights, sounds, smells, tastes and also written words, so pf course I
do agree that an over-reliance on any one mode of perception leads to
minds that lack common sense.
Somewhat ironic given I suspect Postman would disagree with the majority of this article. This article asserts that the amount of engagement with the written word has gone up dramatically; "Amusing Ourselves To Death" has an entire chapter dedicated to demonstrating how much more early Americans engaged with written work. Consumption of books per capita was far higher in the 18th century than it is today, the literacy rate for men in some of the colonies was ~92% (and for women 62%), the number of people who read Common Sense on a per head basis is roughly equivalent to the number of people who watch the Super Bowl today, etc.
The argument in "Amusing Ourselves to Death" is not that the written word enhances reality, it is that it engages critical faculties by forcing the reader to contend with the argument advanced by an author. This article suggests that the written word is a crutch for thought, and thereby diminishes our ability to get at reality. These ideas are not exactly opposed, but there is a certain discordance.
When Postman refers to written word he refers mainly to books. The article mentions the increase of hours spent reading text as a result of texting, social media etc. This form of written word is actually close to Postman's concerns.
It's written word, but its metaphor is the same as the metaphor of mediums like TV.
I agree in part. The texting, social media, etc. has the same disjointed tone as the "now, this" attitude of television that Postman wrote about. However, he had a specific concern with images versus text (whatever kind of text) -- namely, that they pass too quickly for people to dwell upon and can never advance an argument in the way that writing can.
To be honest, I think this is a general weakness in Postman's work. He talks a bit about the difference between pre and post-telegram writing, but he lionizes all 18th century writing despite there being tons of different forms (pamphlets, books, novels) that don't have the same intellectual value imo.
I think what you read is the key here. Mindless reading of text messages, news headlines and social media posts is very different cognitively than reading actual literature, something like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
People spend too much time in their heads and not enough in the real world. We used to say people need to stop reading books and start talking to people.
I smiled at the idea that Gravity's Rainbow is where you might start with 'actual literature'. A book so notoriously difficult to read that it has many guides on doing so and people have described to me how books such as Infinite Jest were light reading in comparison. I don't think you need to go quite as far as Pynchon ;-)
Start with The Crying of Lot 49, which is dense-ish but short, then Bleeding Edge, which is longer but closer to the storyline of a traditional novelist, and is semi-sci-fi.
I then proceeded to Inherent Vice (because of the movie) and then Vineland. Vineland was difficult and heavy in parts, but I enjoyed it overall (the whole chapter on how the protagonist describes the receiving of a business card feels like some kind of fever dream). I own Gravity's Rainbow, but haven't yet had the courage to open to page 1.
My gateway drug was the Inherent Vice movie, after that I started with the Crying of Lot 49 and workes my way through his oeuvre. That's when I realized what literature was for and started reading like a madman ever since. Ony Marcel Proust perhaps bests Pynchon.
You kinda have to read some of his work to know, and it does feel like a secret club with fairly exclusive membership - I don't really belong, I've only ventured into the shallows thus far :)
But the deal is:
Prose that creates a jungle-like density of meaning through the use of long sentences, creatively unusual descriptions using unexpected combinations of words with meanings just slightly twisted to fit into the size of the 'box that's available'.
Prose that acutely both describes and evokes the feel of specific times and places.
I probably miss more than half of the subtlety of his work through lack of familiarity with the 'time and place' stuff. I enjoy the structure created by the delicately woven words, however.
An abridged quoting of Hunter S. Thompson for a particularly memorable evocation of time and place (because this quote is more coherent and memorable than Pynchon):
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime...San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of...
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons nobody really understands at the time--and which never explains in retrospect, what actually happened...
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost SEE the high water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
The funny thing is that Pynchon's working title for what became Gravity's Rainbow was "Mindless Pleasures" but the publisher made him change the name :)
I think the author tries to capture the counterpoint: that much of the effect is due to the sheer volume of text. From the article:
"...we would have to account for the quality of reading too, as much of it involves skimming and darting around the page. But the sheer quantity matters...We are so used to our screens bombarding us with text — news, tweets, emails — that we are almost surprised to discover that the walls around us have nothing to say. The sudden absence of words — the evaporation of the sense of control they give us — feels disorienting. "
Social media posts may be bad for you brain, but my personal opinion of Gravity’s Rainbow is that ~everyone who “enjoys” that painful slog does so because of the “literary” status “enjoying” Gravity’s Rainbow affords them
There’s definitely some fairness to your callout. To make a long story short, I was once quite invested in the genre of literary fiction, and eventually became disillusioned when I realized I had been sucked into a prestige game. My old bitterness comes out in my comment
Interested in sharing what makes this particular work valuable, in your eyes? I‘m assuming that you‘ve read many books. So if you single out this one as an example for a particularly good read, I‘m curious to hear why. Thanks!
There's an element of irony here I suspect. Gravity's Rainbow is (IMHO) a _good_ book but it's a pain in the neck to read as a lot of the writing is... complex.
There's a true point being made that a lot of social media content is incredibly badly written and the brain 'teaches itself' to fill in blanks that you don't have to fill in when reading literature, though.
If you go from reading books (any books, really, anything that's been published) to reading reddit you have to go through an adjustment period as so much of what's on the screen looks like gibberish as it's so un-edited.
I fully agree, mindless reading scaled up and has very limited added value. On the other hand, a good book will be always a source of a good time, i.a.
The author favors "pictures" and "videos" over the corrupting influence of the written word.
Suggesting that we read less and watch more television and YouTube has to be satire.
Decrying reading by assaulting readers with a long form essay has to be satire.
Asserting that readers have difficulty with over-abstraction, and arguing this point using analogies instead of concrete citations of harm caused, again, has to be satire.
Because if it isn't, my god what a shitty and grug-minded article.
I had a friend tell me the other day they're amazed at the number of "important films that everyone has seen" that I haven't seen. I told them, a person who endlessly views TV series and movies that while I enjoy those media, my primary media is written, not video. I can read a book for hours at a time, but unless I'm in a theater, I'm always checking how much longer the thing is going to play, no matter how much I'm enjoying it.
Doomscrolling anything...Reddit, Twitter, even HN...can be a waste of time, and of course I've done it many times. But I've never felt I lost anything while reading a book. I'm one of those people who read the back of cereal boxes when I was a kid. Getting drawn into a text-based fictional world may be an abstraction, but I'll take it anytime.
"If there is no Torah study, there is no worldly involvement; if there is no worldly involvement, there is no Torah study. ... If there is no flour, there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour."
> What would your grasp of the outside world feel like? ... increasingly ... simplified, abstracted, flattened ...
More to the contrary. The more you see selected still images and video clips, the more your perception of the world through this becomes shallow, simplistic, garish. It is the written text which delves into complexity, the multitude of facets and nuances, depth.
> In the allegory "The Cave," Socrates describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world.
So, basically, the point is that if you only ever see the abstraction, it becomes your reality.
... which is funny, because IIRC Socrates was trying to get people recognize "ideal forms", perfect truths, as opposed to their imperfect manifestations/reflections in the world.
Please. The author makes no claims on the quality of what is read and suggests that reading a thousand twenty-word tweets is the same as reading a twenty-thousand word novella. Poppycock!
The joy of long form text is (when done skillfully) it can take the reader on a journey in which brain chemistry is gradually exercised. Moving through a world of possibilities, it sets your subconscious mind up to refute or reinforce perception.
Tweets, LinkedIn posts, Facebook posts... they all give you a hit of dopamine and maybe a jolt of unrealized fear (or maybe a zap of sexy-time lizard-brain fun, depending on what part of twitter you hang out in...) The major social media sites (and many "news" sites) have morphed over to money machines converting human attention to cash by way of ad sales (or investment capital.) Why people feel like they have to subject themselves to that, I don't know. I like my brain chemistry the way it is.
Words don't kill people, people kill people (sometimes with words.)
An unmentioned problem with reading too much is that one becomes reactive to text in their thinking and eventually struggles to create new thought. One can become over-reliant on an unending stream of words to push forward the internal train of thought.
We are constantly programmed by our surroundings. By every stimulus we allow to interact with us. Wherever we go. We can't stop it. We can only control it. Sorta.
That doesn't mean heavy metal is what made me a devil worshipper. Or that video games are the reason I killed that family of four. Or that having cared lovingly for several small stuffed animals as a child is why I spared their dog on that dread day. And social media will not convince anyone that anything else I've written in this paragraph is remotely true. They're not going to lose themselves in some sick fantasy.
Is this the author's stage before or after solipsism? I forget.
Didn’t read 100% of article yet but the premise somewhat brings to mind the book “The Alphabet vs the Goddess”[0] which… definitely criticisms can be made/definitely isn’t the whole story for the events and narrative of history it focuses on, but is really compelling and interesting interweaving of some major historical threads not otherwise easily or often connected
Absurd. Reading and writing is the only reason we’re not stuck in caves. It’s allowed us to create a shared consciousness across time that has been necessary for progress. So the benefits of literacy certainly outweigh any risks.
Furthermore, how is oral communication any less of an abstraction? And what about the quality of the text.
Also, reading is reflection. We’re not investing words like food.
Article poses an interesting question but fails to explore sufficiently.
If an alien landed on Earth today, it might assume that reading and writing are our species’ main function, second only to sleeping and well ahead of eating and reproducing.
> Every minute, humans send 220 million emails, 70 million WhatsApp and Facebook messages, 16 million texts, 530,000 tweets, and make 6 million Google searches.
And the google says: "The average size of an email file is about 75 KB"
That's about 15TB of data every minute, about 21,6 PB every day. Only emails. This number is so abstract i dont believe it's real. I would also say that it's not only humans that sends so much messages...
> Think about what it feels like when you put down your phone after a bumper session of doomscrolling through the day’s awful news. It’s the psychological equivalent of stepping off a merry-go-round and expecting the world to keep spinning.
I've been wanting to explain this feeling for a while now, and this is so elegantly put.
Think of any time someone makes a political argument, or comments on a particular aspect of human nature by referencing something they saw in a movie. I think this is odd, at least if over done, as if the constructed media representation is somehow evidence of anything true. As if people don't have to have real lived experience of some phenomena as long as they watched something about it in a show or whatever.
Reminds me of Baudrillard's "hyperreality" [0] concept, where constructed media becomes "more real than real", here's an excellent presentation summarizing the idea [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality
[1] https://youtu.be/2U9WMftV40c