

New relationships with digital books - asolove
http://adamsolove.com/articles/new-relationships-with-books

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prodigal_erik
Quotations and aphorisms are cached thoughts, and I'm concerned by the
reasonable prediction that people are going to carry them around and use them
more, rather than work out the best decision from scratch. (And yes, my
reaction is itself a cached thought, but one that prompts me towards rather
than away from reconsidering things.)

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/k5/cached_thoughts/>

Another point I wish the article had addresses is that we used to communicate
more often in allusions because it was more likely that other people had read
the same books we had, when there were far fewer books in existence and more
consensus about which we're expected to read.

~~~
asolove
Thanks for your thoughts, I am very interested in both of the things you
mention.

While it's dangerous to memorize precise answers, as your comment shows there
are many good habits of thought worth remembering. They don't provide an
answer, but they lead us to think about the question in a new way. A lot of
faerie takes have that quality, where there isn't a clear moral but you learn
something anyway.

And sometimes they are helpful even if irrational. Certainly that is the case
when you are looking for consolation or hope in a bad situation.

Next, many of us still communicate in allusions, just to a new canon made up
of The Simpsons, internet videos, or pg essays. Every community has its canon,
it's just a question of how we will learn to share it. Online communities like
HN have done a very good job of creating this idea of a body of writing that
the community is expected to know, and this is only going to get more popular
(and the communities more specialized) over time.

------
asolove
We see a lot of posts on HN about the various technologies and startups in the
digital book and web longform reading space.

I wrote this because I think there hasn't been enough discussion of _why_
digital books can make a difference, and why consumers should pay for what is
just plain text, when they perhaps already own print copies.

In the long term, digital books are going to be way different from glossy iPad
apps or Kindle books. They're going to lead to a whole new/old way of reading.

