Found this article through Hacker News, and I thought that it was really interesting. It definitely taps in to something that's had me torn for a long time, as I love reading and writing on actual...
Found this article through Hacker News, and I thought that it was really interesting. It definitely taps in to something that's had me torn for a long time, as I love reading and writing on actual paper, but I also spend a lot of my time consuming content that gets surfaced by various sites on the internet.
I always feel like there's a real difference between the value I get out of the two options, with things on paper seeming to be more memorable and more useful.
Hoping we can get some interesting discussion off of this.
As you said, paper has immense benefits for certain applications. I agree that for quick notes, personal letters, brainstorming, and some books paper is best. I like paper for the same reason I...
As you said, paper has immense benefits for certain applications. I agree that for quick notes, personal letters, brainstorming, and some books paper is best.
I like paper for the same reason I like a combo of digital music and vinyl records. Digital music is great for average consumption, but the whole listening experience of sitting and listening to a record is far more tactile and enjoyable. Large album art, the ritual of setting and flipping records. The superior quality of analog in, analog out for older albums. Yea, newer digitally mastered stuff is higher fidelity and more convienient in a ton of ways, but vinyl records share that same aspect of paper reading/writing that will likely be lost to the sands of time unless we take measures to preserve it.
In my mind, it is because our economy doesn't favor scaling things down such that we can accommodate a niche market indefinitely while not shutting down everything. Shareholders demand not 'providing a sustainable and stable business' but 'continual growth and short-term gains' over everything else.
There's no reason we couldn't produce records, paper, and a whole host of other niche goods if we restructured our economic priorities.
I know I tend to harp on these things, but I think it's because we have so, so many things like this happening and it's both tragic and preventable.
We don't need masses of publishers and commercial printers anymore. We need 'print on demand' books from local print shops. We likely don't need printed magazines or news, just better and cheaper personal printers for those who want them.
In kind, we should be looking to use the remainder of the paper to transition away from plastics. If, after doing that we still produce too much paper, we should scale down paper production to more sustainable managed forests.
By scaling down production slowly, we reach a more sustainable future while still serving the needs of those very useful niche goods.
I never really took to ebooks, rather I had always preferred to read physical books. But since libraries are closed, I have really enjoyed reading ebooks and for me personally I think ebooks are a...
I never really took to ebooks, rather I had always preferred to read physical books. But since libraries are closed, I have really enjoyed reading ebooks and for me personally I think ebooks are a good substitute.
The most interesting part of the article for me was where they tested two groups of people -> one group had to read a story on paper, and the other had to read a story as an ebook. It was found that the paper group reconstructed the plot better. In the article, it said that "a book, unlike a virtual text, gives the brain a concrete spatial arrangement for the action" which seems to say that physical books themselves are inherently a superior medium to read from.
But I do wonder if this result was simply because of a lot of distractions on the computer compared to the simplicity of a paper book, rather than something to do with the physical book itself. For example, when I read an ebook in my browser, I make my browser full-screen, close all other tabs and programs, turn off my phone and also turn off notifications, and I feel like these steps make ebooks have the same 'feel' and impact as regular books, and I feel that I get as much out of ebooks as regular books. I would be curious to see this experiment repeated, but students reading the ebook would have to read it in a sort of 'lockdown-browser' sort of way such that they cannot do anything else on their computers while reading (similar to what some profs do for exams). I personally feel like there wouldn't be any difference between the two groups.
That said, I can see myself going back to print books eventually once the pandemic ends. I don't like to spend so many hours looking at a screen and I like the feel of a paper book in my hands.
Found this article through Hacker News, and I thought that it was really interesting. It definitely taps in to something that's had me torn for a long time, as I love reading and writing on actual paper, but I also spend a lot of my time consuming content that gets surfaced by various sites on the internet.
I always feel like there's a real difference between the value I get out of the two options, with things on paper seeming to be more memorable and more useful.
Hoping we can get some interesting discussion off of this.
As you said, paper has immense benefits for certain applications. I agree that for quick notes, personal letters, brainstorming, and some books paper is best.
I like paper for the same reason I like a combo of digital music and vinyl records. Digital music is great for average consumption, but the whole listening experience of sitting and listening to a record is far more tactile and enjoyable. Large album art, the ritual of setting and flipping records. The superior quality of analog in, analog out for older albums. Yea, newer digitally mastered stuff is higher fidelity and more convienient in a ton of ways, but vinyl records share that same aspect of paper reading/writing that will likely be lost to the sands of time unless we take measures to preserve it.
In my mind, it is because our economy doesn't favor scaling things down such that we can accommodate a niche market indefinitely while not shutting down everything. Shareholders demand not 'providing a sustainable and stable business' but 'continual growth and short-term gains' over everything else.
There's no reason we couldn't produce records, paper, and a whole host of other niche goods if we restructured our economic priorities.
I know I tend to harp on these things, but I think it's because we have so, so many things like this happening and it's both tragic and preventable.
We don't need masses of publishers and commercial printers anymore. We need 'print on demand' books from local print shops. We likely don't need printed magazines or news, just better and cheaper personal printers for those who want them.
In kind, we should be looking to use the remainder of the paper to transition away from plastics. If, after doing that we still produce too much paper, we should scale down paper production to more sustainable managed forests.
By scaling down production slowly, we reach a more sustainable future while still serving the needs of those very useful niche goods.
I never really took to ebooks, rather I had always preferred to read physical books. But since libraries are closed, I have really enjoyed reading ebooks and for me personally I think ebooks are a good substitute.
The most interesting part of the article for me was where they tested two groups of people -> one group had to read a story on paper, and the other had to read a story as an ebook. It was found that the paper group reconstructed the plot better. In the article, it said that "a book, unlike a virtual text, gives the brain a concrete spatial arrangement for the action" which seems to say that physical books themselves are inherently a superior medium to read from.
But I do wonder if this result was simply because of a lot of distractions on the computer compared to the simplicity of a paper book, rather than something to do with the physical book itself. For example, when I read an ebook in my browser, I make my browser full-screen, close all other tabs and programs, turn off my phone and also turn off notifications, and I feel like these steps make ebooks have the same 'feel' and impact as regular books, and I feel that I get as much out of ebooks as regular books. I would be curious to see this experiment repeated, but students reading the ebook would have to read it in a sort of 'lockdown-browser' sort of way such that they cannot do anything else on their computers while reading (similar to what some profs do for exams). I personally feel like there wouldn't be any difference between the two groups.
That said, I can see myself going back to print books eventually once the pandemic ends. I don't like to spend so many hours looking at a screen and I like the feel of a paper book in my hands.