

It's OK if you don't read books anymore - jason_shah
http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/17300512536/its-ok-if-you-dont-read-books-anymore

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kayman
You are learning when you read blogs/twitter and news articles but as stated
in an article here <http://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/>,
as opposed to a blog, a book takes time to write. When you first write about
any topic, the first things that come out are almost always someone else's
thoughts at first. Only when you delve deep do you dig up original thoughts on
the subject. A good book is usually an author's lifetime experience
encapsulated into a few hundred pages sold for <20 bucks. That is a good deal.
I don't think books will never go away as being a source of information. The
only difference is now we can carry a million books with us everywhere we go
(digital format) as opposed to one time, we'd have to allocate space for every
book we have.

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jason_shah
Excellent Deresiewicz article. It's true that very original thoughts come out
once you have the time to establish context, a connection with the audience,
etc. And this enables a sort of learning and communication that may be
impossible or difficult to transmit via short form content - be it blogging or
micro-blogging. That being said, I actually see a ton of insightful, one liner
comments on Twitter all the time. And the ratio of time taken vs. learning
absorbed is far better than I think a book has ever given me. Maybe in the
next 5-10 years books stick around via new e-readers, and one day, a chip in
our body that lets us read anything any time but just closing our eyes. They
may never totally go away. But just like live theater dominated the sphere of
'entertainment' long ago, it has retreated to a niche, and I think with the
rise of short form content, mass video production/distribution, and other
media shifts, that is where books are headed, too.

