Books come across as if they were so high-and-mighty and thought-through but they’re less robust than a well-worn, palimpsested wiki page or even a solid, hashed-out Usenet thread.
They’re more like sermons than conversations, being talked at than talked with.
In linguistics school one teacher said to us that “written language is just a technology”. It’s one particular finger pointing to the moon but it’s nothing to get hung about. If videos or voice messages really were a better way for people to record and convey and teach and understand things then it would be fine if it, over centuries, pushed out the written word.
But for a book lover like me, books aren’t the be-all-end-all nor do they have to be. They’re just a stepping stone away from the internet out into the real world, the real living off-line, off-page world. Books are a kind of methadone patch to still get to read without having to read online stuff.
And I dunno all the reasons why the internet is so bad but it is. The algo-driven social medias are for sure bad, we know that much. The snippets pushing viral randos ahead of your own friends and fam.
But even more conversational versions like small closed groups and one-to-one conversations over encrypted protocols can be a breeding ground for nazis and facho propaganda and create echo chambers exacerbating and radicalizing people. The infocalypse is already upon us and the brownshirts have gained more ground that I ever would’ve feared.
Even when the internet is at its best it can be more than a small-town girl like me can handle. One thousand voices at the same time. What makes one person happy leads to a heartbreaking diss from someone else.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the future without internet is the way to go. The tyrant regimes are trying to shut down internet because it’s a threat to them. But that can be true at the same time that the internet the way it currently exists is something that I can’t healthily handle, that I’m a li’l bit too crazy for.
We’ve been trying our best to build a new course-corrected internet with fixed email (e2e), retro webpages (gemini) and healthier socials (fedi). But it’s soulcrushing when that then gets torn up and spat upon by Masto trying to reintroduce algo hell with their “explore” tab and drive everyone to huge instances with broken hashtags.
Or maybe it’s not about the network at all. Maybe it’s literally as dumb as it being the shiny. LCD screen tech. It sounds dumb and incredible and “r/PhonesAreBad” so it’s with some hesitation I’m looking at study after study coming in saying that reading comprehension and retention is way lower on screen than in books, for adults as well as for kids. Even with (if I understand it correctly) the same texts. Maybe e-ink will give the world its brain back? Just in time for us to be the calmest, most focused zen minds on the cinder.