“Why Books Suck”
13th May 2013
Michael Levin explains.
Prior to the 2008 attention span meltdown, books contained the precise amount of information people needed in order to feel informed about a topic. Today, most people no longer need to feel informed about anything. If they do feel an urge to learn something, even TMZ is usually TMI. Why would you need 400 pages about Harry Truman, or Lady Di, or even Lady Gaga for that matter, when the equivalent of four pages online would suffice?
Books are also boring. You can’t check the weather — or your stocks, or look at porn — in a book. All you can do is read it. The serious point here (I know the porn reference threw you) is that we’ve moved into a world of color, light and sound with which the frumpy old black and white book cannot compete. Reading something online may or may not stick with you the way reading it from a book might, but you can look up all kinds of side references, videos, speeches, and whatnot that a plain old book can’t offer.