The way I look at reading is if you don’t read then you will only ever be exposed to ideas that people around you choose to share, and you’ll never hear or learn anything at a greater level than the smartest person in your local area.
But reading and books opens the world of ideas and knowledge to anyone. Nowadays, post internet and www, when information is abundant, reading long form books isn’t the advantage it used to be. But it can still be beneficial to read long form exposition by experts.
Fifty years ago, I may have agreed that books are invaluable, precisely because of the information contained within.
But ever since the Internet became a thing, and almost universally became the main source of information for everybody, I often feel like many people are holding on to books because they're not willing to let go.
...a case of false attribution in regards to format vs. content, if there's such a thing.
That doesn't really make sense. Most credible sources of information you find on the internet are sourced from books, not vice-versa. You don't read credible books about the Battle of Kursk that are sourced from YouTube videos, you watch credible YouTube videos about the Battle of Kursk that are sourced from books. If you read a Wikipedia article and scroll down to all the citations, many of them are from books.
It's not a format vs. content thing. I'd rather have all my books in a six-ounce Kindle than on massive bookshelves lining my walls. It's simply that the vast supermajority of recorded information collected by the human race has been in the form of books. If you stay on the internet, you're barely dipping your toes in the water.
That having been said, there are a ton of useless books that can easily be skipped, many of which stem from stretching an essay-sized idea into 200 pages. The Internet cut out a lot of that nonsense. And there are certain things, like programming, that you're usually better off learning directly from the internet. But once you're past the intellectual puddle-jumping of popular business and self-help, books are where it's at.
You're (rightfully) highlighting the importance of proper research into a subject, and books (currently) provide a better monetary incentive/reward for that, but other than that, you've basically proven my point.
Replace books with a (credible) data source on the Internet, and you'll have the same result you're describing.
I have in my hand a 1942 edition of the 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' by T.E. Lawrence that I am currently half way through. Can you suggest which credible data source on the internet is going to compete with Lawrence's first hand account of events?
An approved and verified word-by-word upload of it, preferably on some public institution's servers.
Judging by the amount of downvotes I've received, people are clearly not making the distinction between content and format, which I regress, was the point I was attempting to make.
>An approved and verified word-by-word upload of it, preferably on some public institution's servers.
Which servers do I have to visit to verify the verification and whose approval would this all rely on? With books, there are copyright libraries containing printed physical artifacts that I could use as a verification of a given printed text.
Also, I have the book and can stay immersed in it far easier than trying to read the same from a screen. I have read plenty of short stories on screens, but have abandoned every attempt at reading a full length novel that way, whereas in book form, I can finish a novel in a night. Books are simply better suited for this job, at least for me.
Well a book uploaded to a server is still a book. A book is a book because of the way it was written and how it was structured, not because it gets printed on dead trees. I think this is where you were losing the crowd.
Oh man I totally agree. It's a fetish for dead tree books. And to be perfectly honest I have the fetish, but I recognize that it's just a fetish. It irks me to no end that the whole education system keeps on pounding this idea into our heads (parent's heads) that they need to limit screen time because only physical books are important for education. Physical books are awesome but they will dwindle in popularity as our reading tech gets better.
It's useful to disambiguate between the book "format", that is, an amount of text of a certain size that has been edited put together in a clear manner, and the physical book, that is, a codex of dead trees with ink on it.
IMHO shitty trade and mass-market paperbacks should die a much needed death and the few books that survive should be Folio Society style, well bound books with good typography.
>IMHO shitty trade and mass-market paperbacks should die a much needed death and the few books that survive should be Folio Society style, well bound books with good typography.
Looking to my bookcase, do you think I am made of money?
But reading and books opens the world of ideas and knowledge to anyone. Nowadays, post internet and www, when information is abundant, reading long form books isn’t the advantage it used to be. But it can still be beneficial to read long form exposition by experts.