Comment by keiferski
1 year ago
I share the author's feelings on the old web, but I think this misses a fundamental point about younger people: they don't really read as the default anymore, in the sense of reading longform blog posts/articles/newspapers. You could blame this on the impatience of youth, but I think it's actually more of a fundamental shift of media formats. Websites-as-default have gone away because browsing the web (i.e. reading stuff on websites) has largely gone away for most people.
It's easy to forget that reading text is in no way "natural" to the human experience, it's just an old, reliable technology. Video, which functions as a proxy to in-person presence and speech, is dramatically more appealing to the average person than the abstract symbol system that is writing and reading.
It would not surprise me at all if a century from now, video is the default format, with text-first things like transcripts redesigned to minimize the downsides of video and replicate the benefits of text.
I'm slightly alarmed by this, not just because of the decline of literacy and the slower speed of transmission, but the stronger charisma effects through voice seem to me to be a driver of problems. That seems to be why there are so many terrible influencer cult leaders.
Part of me has the same concerns, as I love books and think reading is critical. However, I also realize that reading and books are a technology that has developed through history, like anything else, and that a yet-unseen format of the future (that incorporates video, text, audio, etc.) may be more effective than reading. I don't actually think reading is a great way of communication, it's more just evolutionarily fit compared to speech.
" I don't actually think reading is a great way of communication, it's more just evolutionarily fit compared to speech."
This is a very baffling thing to say. Its like saying "I don't think fish gills are an effective form of breathing for fish, but it just happened to evolve like that." Reading and writing is an amazing way to communicate things that need to span time. Street signs, postcards, books, literally everything around you that is man made likely has some form of writing on it.
Reading/writing obviously has limitations...like it is difficult to interpret tone in many of these HN comments...but that is hardly a nail in the coffin of the form of communication.
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> they don't really read as the default anymore, in the sense of reading longform blog posts/articles/newspapers
Did they ever? I grew up with newspapers, but adults back then were saying much the same then just with books as their example of "things kids don't read these days"[0], to the extent that my mum decided she ought to bribe me to read more[1]. But I also remember reading some claim that most people back then were reading just the headlines of newspapers, and if they were particularly engaged by that, perhaps the first/last paragraphs too.
[0] right before Harry Potter came out.
[1] I can't remember exactly how much any more, but I got at least a few week's worth of pocket money from the New Testament.
Yes, they did, even if they were reading pulp novels and not classic literature.
I am the "they" in the case of last generations' "kids these days".
What "kids these days" do and don't do has always been a subject of parental concern, but the reality is that people aren't a homogenous group, and being an adult makes you more aware of people who grow up differently than you did.
Just as my mum was concerned about my reading habits (she probably saw a headline about it), so too are you concerned about the current generation's.
My generation was all over the place, and so is today's. The top readers of my generation read widely, most adults when I was a kid didn't read more than the headline; The top readers of the current generation read widely, most adults today don't read more than the headline… and even here, we get comments where people clearly comment without having read the link.
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I think it is not that people don't like reading.
It is just that video content generate so much more monetization. At least compared to work done. Thus most relevant content is generated as video instead of text. And those generating text are struggling with revenue sources.
If you're a new creator and don't have family with good media connections, then YouTube is pretty much the only way that you can actually get paid for what you make. Regardless of medium.
Anybody tell me what are the other realistic options?
I think if you asked people under the age of thirty what they prefer, 90% are going to choose video over books.
Maybe not books. But let's ask would they prefer video to check ingredients in a recipe or a textual article? Or maybe video instead of wikipedia page to verify some facts...
Similar things go to many things that would clearly be superior as text, but there simply isn't that much money in something user will quickly skim over. Instead of forced pre-roll adds and sponsorships.
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I don't know where you get that idea from. But humans has been reading for thousands of years. And on a cognitive level reading is superior to video or sound. Tons of evidence has been based on that premise.
It has nothing to do with young people and a sudden change in human patience. If your young ones are impatient of they read something is disturbing them, but it's definitely not human evolution.
Reading as a mass culture phenomenon is absolutely not thousands of years old and mass literacy didn't exist in a lot of places a mere century or two ago. Even today, you'd be surprised at how most people have very basic literacy skills.
And on a cognitive level reading is superior to video or sound.
I'm pretty skeptical of that claim, but even if it's true, it doesn't really matter if reading is better than watching a video if people prefer to watch videos.
I also specifically said it's not an issue of impatience, but rather a fundamental shifting of media formats.
Why would it not matter? You think just because a mass group prefers one thing, it will have good outcomes? Will/are your kids glued to screens 24/7 because others prefer it? Seems like you may be a lost cause already.
And maybe mass literacy hasn't been around for millenia, but written form of communication and story telling certainly has.
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Video? How quaint. Why not simply translate the latent representation of concepts.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to communicate here, but: the average person likes watching/listening to other people talk. Maybe the über cyborg AI gods of the future will communicate directly with mental models, but for everyone else, the only thing that is better than video is probably a hologram, which is basically the same thing taken to the next level.
As sad as it is, video is already a preferred and main content format for most people. It always was. The closer to reality, the more engaging [EDIT: and easier to digest] the content. We had some text renaissance due to technical limitations, but that's over already. Beginner programmers now routinely shun written content in favor of video - how contradictory is that? But that's how it is right now.
Writing as a mode of communication requires effort on both the creator and consumer sides. That effort has many positive side effects, which is why some people still favor it [EDIT: and will favor it for a long time in the future, until something genuinely better shows up]. The problem is that, no matter what, effort is still effort, and people generally don't like to exhaust themselves. Gyms would be chock-full, and we'd have no obesity problem if it weren't so.
Your "century from now" estimate is extremely optimistic, to the point of being completely divorced from reality. If I had to bet, I'd say we will lose most textual content from mainstream consumption in the next 5 to 10 years. My guess is that writing will become the equivalent of today's HTML and JavaScript: a source code to be interpreted by the machine to produce a visual representation that people will consume. It'll disappear into the background and will only be touched by professionals.
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Just commenting on your timelines. They are a bit on the short side considering the rapid pace of technology.