Why Do We Celebrate The 'Solitary' Experience Of Books But Decry The Social Experience Of Online Social Media?
from the newness-vs.-oldness dept
We already wrote making people more lonely, but that same piece made Mathew Ingram go on a bit of rant on Twitter raising a good point. He noted that the same folks who decry social media for making people lonely often celebrate the importance of the solitary experience of reading books. He finds it odd that the solitary experience of reading books is seen as sacrosanct and notes that both experiences can be used to "escape from the real world." So why is one considered bad and one considered an important cultural point?I'd guess part of it is simply generational. As Douglas Adams has stated (I'm paraphrasing slightly), every tech around by the time you're born is "normal," new technology that is invented before you're thirty is cool and new and anything that gets invented after you're thirty is "against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it." It seems there's definitely an element of that happening here. Also, there's some view that talking to friends is just idle chatter... whereas reading a book is a "serious" thing from which you might learn. Of course, the fact that the most popular books are probably just as insight free as many online conversations is ignored. It's not like everyone reading books is digging into a meaty exploration of ways to solve all the world's problems. Either way, Mathew raises a good point. I'd be curious if someone can defend the importance of books while also defending the claim that social networking is useless without being self-contradictory.
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Filed Under: books, douglas adams, mathew ingram, sherry turkle, social media, solitude
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I find it weirder in reverse: I watch an old cop drama TV show or movie, for example, and wonder how they got anything done with such limited or time-consuming ways of communicating.
But then I remember having to get up off the couch to change the TV channel and dropping film off to be processed and reel to reel tapes for recording. ;)
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Video Games = Murder Simulators
Books = Fantasy
/s
If I read about Harry Potter, it's fine but if I play Harry Potter, then I'm practicing to become a witch!
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Knowing/not knowing
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Re: Knowing/not knowing
I called it
Apr 24th, 2012 @ 9:26am
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120423/14264618618/sherry-turkle-says-technology-is-makin g-us-lonelier-because-we-spend-less-time-alone-something.shtml#c662
Now @Mike..... where is that lucrative ad revenue supported , journalist's story finders fee that you owe me ?
: )
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Gawd ...
When you're listening to music, you know you're alone.
When you're watching a movie, you know you're alone.
When you're riding a bicycle, you know you're alone.
When you're taking a bath, you know you're alone.
When you're taking a dump, you know you're alone.
When you're sleeping, you know you're alone.
When you're masturbating, you know you're alone.
When you're sitting at home attempting to fulfill a craving to read something insightful and instead read yet another bit of ancient hackneyed marketing sloganeering that someone is trying to pass off as wisdom, you know you're alone.
...
I could go on, but even the simple-minded should get the point by now.
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Re: Gawd ...
Like, just for example, when reading a book, you can't lie about your height, race or location to the author or anyone around you at the moment and expect that they'll believe you. Being able to do that, say on social media, makes you pretty much alone. I mean, unless you're dangerously psychotic enough to believe that you're your avatar.
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see also http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion
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Seriously, techdirt shouldn't fall into trying to debunk inane, inaccurate comparisons. It just perpetuates them.
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http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-tradition.html
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sure there are exceptions but even there, you pick up a stupid book, you can stop reading it. you cant always just stop the tide of stupid tweets and at some level you just either have to put up with the stupidity or not use it at all.
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Response to: harbingerofdoom on Apr 27th, 2012 @ 9:18pm
This flies completely in the face of Mike's argument.
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Re: the intelligence level of books can pretty much always be appropriate to the person
In addition, there's the fact that, since internet blogs are now the predominant mass-medium for casual reading--far outweighing in popular-attention and much-more-resorted-to than are printed, bound books, especially high quality books, the impact of the common inanity of the social networks is far greater than that of a particularly stupid book; this is true despite the fact that a book's being simply lousy is usually no impediment to its doing very well in selling to the public.
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Same reason a game like 'Grand Theft Auto' is looked at as 'horrible child corrupting evil' - but movies like Saw and Debbie Does Dallas are just joked about.
Typical double standards.
Of course, that being said, I do find most social media pretty mindless - like TV. I'm more of the reading/gaming type.. :)
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It is a matter of fact that some online discussions far exceed the intelligence level of some books. Granted - the overall average leans towards books, however one should not simply ignore the exceptions.
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Read it again, and you will find the opposite.
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You seem to be trying to defend reading books as somehow better than engaging with social media. And yet here you are, engaging with social media.
Reading a book can be an enlightening experience. It can also be very similar to eating popcorn. It all depends on the book.
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not a chance
ii) that contact via social media has the same effect on loneliness as no contact at all; and
(ii) that time spent on social platforms equals time taken away from contact in vivo.
i find both exceedingly unlikely.
in fact, the challenge is pretty much impossible in the way that it is phrased. far from being "useless", social networks clearly have some utility. this, to me at least, is self-evidently true.
- i would argue that books have a higher value because the data in them are organized by the writers and editors, thus saving the reader-browser the time of having to organize it themselves.
- i would argue that they have a higher potential for imparting information at a greater level of depth. (this is why you don't see study materials on social media platforms.)
- i could even argue that they add better conversation value to a coffee shop conversation if you ever get out enough to have one.
but are books any sort of substitute for facebook if you're tom hanks in "castaway"?
not a chance.
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Re: not a chance
1) Books have a higher value? Doesn't that depend on the book? You seem to assume books are about data (your word). Try perusing the "Romance" section of your local book store.
2) I go to coffee shops for coffee, not conversations.
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I'll give it a go
Social media, on the other hand, is essentially a million monkeys banging on keyboards. Huge areas of it are nothing but the mental diarrhea of its users. There is no barrier to entry and no quality control of any kind. Yes, you'll find a few gems in social media but they're buried in a mountain of shit.
Competition is the difference. There is no competition in social media because there is no barrier to entry and no expected return. There are no consequences to publishing a mountain of garbage. Competition creates better products because the ones that lose die.
It's like the old saying: If everyone is special, then no one is.
P.S. Please, no comments citing specific examples; this is a macro principle and I'm well aware that both systems have their exceptions.
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As for politics and philosophy, we're doing that right now. Neither of us are experts and neither of us has anyone double checking for quality or content. What we produced would be better if we did.
Don't get me wrong. I like a good stretch at icanhascheezburger or a debate on techdirt. Both of them are of little actual value though. However amusing they might be for a moment, that's as long as their value lasts.
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No specific example (but your caveat is a desperate special pleading), this is a macro principle for which I will not provide specific examples (The Destroyer: 145 novels).
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a recent article showed, that the more you socialize outside the internet, the more active you are on the internet as well. in the offline world, over hundreds of years "reading a lot of books" became a synonym for "being intelligent", thus hiding the fact, that avid readers often are socially challenged. now those people who are socially challenged on the internet are frustrated because there's no positive analogy for avoiding social media - you don't have that aura of great wisdom and vast knowledge, rather you are completely ignored. the logical reaction is, to despise social media usage and to glorify solitarism.
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That's an astoundingly foolish position to take. On behalf of myself at least, please don't speak for me.
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second, the ignorance doesn't come from social media users chosing intently to ignore someone else, but from the sheer fact that social media users use social media and you don't have the ability to perceive someone within social media who doesn't use social media himself.
now you take that strawman argument to describe my position as foolish, yet it hasn't ever been my position, but one you yourself inferred from what i have written.
try to get your argumentation straight, before replying to other commenters. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/poster
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Though, again, with insight like that, please don't speak for me.
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and i assume you are a busy person, if you comment on all comments that don't speak for you, that they don't speak for you :)
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Excuse me? Do you have data for this?
Sounds like a sweeping generalization to me, much like the generalizations about social media that you're complaining about.
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Love that Douglas Adams quote
Although.. I'm already 31... Have to think which technology from the last 1,5 years I find introducing the end of civilization ;-)
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Re: Love that Douglas Adams quote
The quote you are after is: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/40622.html
Lots more good ones on http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Douglas_Adams
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books vs social networking
on the other hand, i'm sure that a person has a billion friends that they need to be with via text 24/7, but when you are with me, i try for no phones allowed. that is rude.
as far social networks make you less social, i believe that. if you are in a room of people you should be wholly with those people. if they bore you, leave and text or phone all you want.
texting while with people is like whispering.it is just bad manners. and having your phone on the table whole eating with someone or people is worse than putting your elbows on the table,,,,,rude
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Re: books vs social networking
Whispering is not always bad manners. There are plenty of times we are in a group of people but a smaller subset needs to confer semi privately. Happens all the time in business and social settings. My GF and I frequently confer quietly about when we want to leave a social gathering. You may be at the same gathering, but our decision criteria is none of your business.
I've read books to children. I've read books to girlfriends. I've read books before an audience. I've listened to books being read to an audience. These all seem like social activities to me.
If I arranged to have dinner with someone / persons, but a critical work issue is bubbling, I may keep my mobile on the table. Apologies, but not all of us work 9-5.
I think you are trying to draw a bright line rule where in reality, in social settings there are a very large range of personal interests and so levels of direct engagement.
Yes, I put my elbows on the table.
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Easy:
Books are important because they give you the chance to learn interesting things from people who are (or were) smarter than you, many of whom have been dead for a long time.
Social networking sites provide far fewer opportunities for this, while providing far more opportunities for reading really trivial nonsense. They also encourage people to share everything, no matter how trivial, which unsurprisingly leads to an even higher ratio of trivial nonsense than usual.
Mind you, I know that books provide opportunities to read trivial nonsense as well, but there are also things like bibliographies, reading lists, and collections like the Great Books that allow people to avoid at least some of this nonsense. So far, I know of nothing similar that exists for social networking.
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I'm older, but I like social networking/media.
I love the idea of facebook, I'm terribly opposed to the walled-garden-of-temptation it is to anyone with bad intentions of social manipulation. I'd prefer something more open-source with direct user control of content and links, rather than central storage.
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If you acknowledge this, why ignore the fact that the internet provides opportunities to read and participate in the discussion of non trivial material as well.
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I don't love Jackie Collins, and I love boingboing, this blog and the Volokh Conspiracy.
And you know what? Sometimes I like Stephen King and reddit, and sometimes I can't stand Thomas Pynchon or Don Delillo. And sometimes vice-versa.
So anyone making this a binary world where a book-reader can't Tweet and a Tweeter can't read books is just a grad student trying to shoehorn her thesis into the real world where, of course, one of these choices does not foreclose the other.
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Where did you get this?
I said nothing against the internet at all. The internet is much more than social networking. For example, I spend hours and hours every week reading books on the internet.
That's right, in addition to Facebook and Twitter and Youtube and Wikipedia there are a few other things on the internet. Such as millions of books. Pretty much the whole cultural history of humanity has been scanned and put up someplace or another. Millions of books available for free, all of which can be downloaded and read within seconds.
I have nothing against social networking either. I personally find the bit about the millions of scholarly books and works of literature and scientific classics and so on being freely and instantly available to be more interesting than Twitter, but that's really just a personal preference.
I was simply responding to the challenge:
"I'd be curious if someone can defend the importance of books while also defending the claim that social networking is useless without being self-contradictory."
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Insight Free?
Mike, I gotta take umbrage on this point. I do not disagree with your (or Ingram's) overall argument that decrying social media is foolish. But saying that most popular books lack insight is not supportable.
The best, and usually most popular, books explore complex ideas and characters and offer all sorts of insights. Both fiction and non-fiction do this, while even at the same time entertaining us. A science fiction book involving artificial intelligence can give us insight about what makes us human and whether a machine can be sentient - something we may have to consider in the real world in the next decades. Crime dramas and murder mysteries can give insight into complex social situations or the way criminals and police think. Just because a book is popular doesn't mean it can't make the reader think - the best authors can even "trick" reluctant thinkers into doing so under the guise of entertainment.
Books have their place, and offer insights, just as social media has its place and can offer its own.
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http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/28/the-power-of-young-adult-fiction/adults-sh ould-read-adult-books
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Re: Insight Free?
On the flip side, a buddy is currently posting about being scared of a group of loud Germans in his local cafe because "whenever a bunch of Germans start getting loud, it usually ends in an event with a "I" or a "II" at the end"- leading to comments comments from others referencing WW2.
Totally innocuous fb post from a cafe turns into a historical back & forth, sort of.
Conclusion: this whole argument is based on a false equivalency. Don't feed into it.
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Books were originally designed to spread words, period. They could be fact, fiction, opinions or folklore.
Some people like the colour red. I like the colour blue. Some people like antique furniture. It makes me barf. Some people "celebrate the solitary experience of reading books". Not me.
I celebrate the learning of facts. Many people (irrational ones, imo) despise facts, because facts can negate or at least challenge their own causes, beliefs and biases.
I will read if I think that it is the better/best route to the data that I need. If a good teacher is a better option I'll let them teach me (but beware so-called "teachers", the moment I detect stupidity, bias, baselessness or lies, you're off my list). I also learn a lot by teaching myself (often called the "hard way", but imo, often the best way).
I also challenge so-called fact in science. They're often wrong, but at least honest science is open to new facts, even if it challenges existing beliefs (before the weaker-minded among you knee-jerk, remember that words and facts are not the same thing).
I celebrate learning facts. And I think that anyone who celebrates an institution or institutional cause (be it books, rap, religion, CD's, cars, furniture or whatever) without being able to provide a rational reason (I consider "because that is what is done" as a massive fail in that department) to not be in control of his or her own mind.
I personally couldn't give a damn how, or with or without whom, I get facts. I just want them.
I see no cause for celebration.
Yes I was playing word-games with the multiple meanings of the verb "to celebrate" in the previous line. Did I mention that I like to have fun, too?
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Criticism which calls for responsibilty is booed as elitist and condescending.
The merits or demerits of reading depend, of course, on what one chooses to read. And in that regard, the same ignoramauses who glory in the zero-effort zone of the on-line discussion fora stay far, far away from reading texts which make demands on them.
For me, one of the most glaring but unnoticed, unremarked aspects of the ridiculously lame replies which my own criticisms drew in the earlier referenced post--- "Turkle Says Technology Is Making Us Lonelier Because We Spend Less Time Alone, Or Something"-- was the way I was denounced for being condescending even as these same critics accepted uncritically the original post's pronounced mockery and derision of Sherry Turkle's article.
Like practically everything which critics wrote in defense of the thoughtless mocking of Turkle's article--an article which I veiwed as much, much too mild, too timid in its presentation of the greivous social harms fostered by so much of technology which Turkle writes of (though readers' responses showed that some simply missed the point completely!) , the asserion here that this issue is somehow one of "newness-vs.-oldness" is absurd.
Mike, you began, right out of the shoot, by mocking and ridiculing what you only too painfully obviously didn't understand--Turkle's points and arguments.
Now you're back with yet more silly musings with this "Why Do We Celebrate The 'Solitary' Experience Of Books But Decry The Social Experience Of Online Social Media?"
The answers--as if you were really interested in finding them---presented in thorough and brilliantly presented books---which you haven't read and won't read. Neither you nor your cohort of sycophants would show that much initiative or effort.
Your efforts, where they count and show genuine interest, are in the careful exposition of the endless nonsense which characterizes authority's efforts to defend and extend the reach of copyright where it makes neither sense nor benefits to do so.
But the rest of your enterprise here is devoted to the completely critical defense of technology; your site is a leading example of what has been described astutely as "techno-optimism" which to a great extent resembles in all its worst aspects religious fanaticism.
See (what interesting thinking and writing looks like):
e.g.
"techno-optimism is a kind of religion"
Posted on 27 April 2012 by Freddie /
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2012/04/27/techno-optimism-is-a-kind-of-religion/
and,
"rewriting myself"
Posted on 27 April 2012 by Freddie /
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2012/04/27/rewriting-myself/#comment-1161
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This quote from your article, slightly reworked, is a perfect description of what I wanted to say after just reading the comments on the original Turkle article.
"Then today I read proximity1 writing about an examination of Turkle. He pulls a bunch of grand claims out of thin air, congratulates himself for doing so, preemptively sneers at those who would question him, and does so with stunningly little in the way of evidence. The kicker: he has no idea why he is an asshole." Really, you spend half of the time in there refusing to actually make a point while droning on about you wouldn't have to make a point if everyone read the same books as you and agreed with them but everyone is too stupid to read because they like the internet.
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But apparently you don't mind that condescension, that "preemptive sneer."
Unlike you, I do object to it. I objected to it---by returning comments in kind, comments which others laughably denounced as condescending even as they missed or ignored the dripping condescension in Masnick's original posting.
That it's necessary to point out such obvious self-contradiction in your "reasoning" is precisely why, for the most part, I declined to bother even responding to similar inane drivel such as yours above.
If there were any, even the smallest, "price of entry" to participate here, you and your comments wouldn't pass muster. But there's no price of entry.
You're right in your element here--a place where by majoritarian self-conceit and complacency, knowledge per se and its place and importance in public discourse (though that term is too flattering for what typically goes on in these kinds of blogs) is denigrated and sheer sublime ignorance parades itself for the spectacle of doing so.
I take it as a compliment that you call me an asshole. Your opinion is, in this particular, as, probably in general, something useful mainly as a guide to what to beware of being in agreement with or approved by. Opinions such as yours are the stuff of popular opinion polls--which come to us devoid of any indications of the respondants' qualifications to speak knowledgably about whatever the issue of the moment might be.
When I hear that "X % of some public thinks such-and-such," one of my first thoughts is, "Yeah, but what do those of that segment of public opinion actually know about the matter?" That's at least as interesting as what the X % think about something.
Discussions in which it is a habit skip over and ignore any and all reference to participants' pertinent knowledge of---or the lack of knowledge of-- a topic are as interesting and as useful as knowing what some undefined class of people who know virtually nothing about "X" think about "X".
I offered reading references for the benefit of those not familiar with those sources who are interested in following them up--- as well as to give an indication of my demonstrated interest in the topic and at least some background awareness in relevant reading to others who are familiar with those sources.
The rest of the crowd--those who neither know nor care to know--aren't worth the time or trouble for me to join in a discussion founded on their determined ignorance of and general indifference to the topic under pseudo-discussion.
But what is worth pointing out is that this medium, though it might in theory be otherwise, apparently exists first and foremost to preempt and kill any such danger of informed public discussion. It is, in other words, an integral part of that society of spectacle which exists in and for itself as a distraction from anything of real importance which otherwise might threaten occur to our public awareness.
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Is very rare to capture ones own cognitive dissonance, so all your discourse about how bad it is, is just another form of drivel, driven probably by your own anger on the subject or other "bad" underlying feelings, you seem to resent people expressing themselves and many may get the feeling that if it is not done your way there possibly can't be any other way that could possibly be correct and fair, which of course is absurd.
Your sources are not worth it and like you are the product of insane minds that couldn't handle reality, there is no spectacle society, there is society where the underlying experiences are real as it gets, people try to pass themselves as something else being pretenders and when they can't pretend anymore they move on, it starts at an young age, when people try to show to others how cool they are by trying to be the smartest, the strongest or anything else they can come up with, in fact the variation of responses is the strongest part of society, not the comformaty to some sort of perfect ideal, the perfect ideal is the inherent chaos that masks the rules of that system, public discourse of course reflects that and for people who believe in cleanliness it must be abhorrent.
Social media in fact may create more intellectuals or pseudo intellectuals like yourself in the future because underlying it all is the fact that it is mostly a read only medium, people need to get into the habit of reading and when they decide if ever to edify yourself to your standards they may chose to do so.
Meanwhile people may not know how to express themselves and you many not be able to understand what they are trying to say with their novelty ways of expression, but the public or the mass of people out there do for the most part understand what it is being talked about it and express that sentiment to others even left alone.
There is no society of spectacle because we always where about spectacle, the spectacle of life, what it is important is the knowledge derived from those experiences, and they continue to be real.
In ancient Roman times some people complaining about those same issues you are complaining and still life moved on, that is why probably nobody wants to get informed about those discussions because it is a weak that has no merits.
Life is what it is, you either accept it or not it doesn't make others more wrong or more right either way it just is.
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I don't object much--or even at all to how people express themselves--whether that "how" is supposed to mean "on social network fora such as those on the internet/www as opposed to, for example, on the sidewalk, in a caf� or in the letters-to-the-editor pages of a newspaper or magazine" or whether it's supposed to mean "the manner (i.e. style) in which they express their opinions, arguments, etc."
I'm arguing that some (the more the better) actual knowledge gained through intellectual effort (that would be reading sources which call for some effort on our parts to understand them) is typically automatically dismissed, rejected, ridiculed, denounced as both unnecessary as well as condescending, elitist, arrogant, etc. in practically all fora such as this one--whether it's a specialized interest forum or a very general interest forum; I'm also claiming that, without going so far as to actually run many people off, a site could experience better, more interesting commentary if there were at least a common assumption that informed comment, based on reading (when reading is a well-founded indicator of having gained some knowledge of the topic(s) ) among the regular participants, that this would be generally a good thing, something to encourage.
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Social media is actually the celebration of community values, it is the reconnecting of the human race with other human beings, is the exchange of multiple experiences that when summed up amount to something, different from a book that never will be nothing but a book good or bad, a book is a frozen moment in time, social media is the thaw of times.
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_un_ critical defense of...
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Useless?
This is part of human existence... it's been going on with TV vs. books forever -- I still hear far too frequently from TV haters that TV rots your brain and is worthless and how they can't understand why anyone watches it.
I find this kind of thing amazing, actually, because those opposed evidently lack the wisdom to ask the people who watch TV or use the internet WHY they use it, and IF they've found some value in it.
I'm also amazed that anyone is surprised that the TV vs. books mindset has translated into Social Media vs. books.
What is it with people needing to promote their way of doing things as better than others when it comes to such pretentious shit as reading books vs. socializing?
Maybe they're just jealous :) Nothing fans the flames of indignation like not being included.
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Reading is something we do by ourselves. It's not a social activity. It perhaps does make us better people or makes us better informed people for our next social interaction, but it is as personal and self-satisfying as any activity can be. We do it for ourselves, for our own pleasure.
Social media? That is the exact opposite. We do it for everyone else, and ourselves. Some people consider it ego masturbation, nothing more. Never before did the average person feel the need to take out a full page to tell people that they "found a parking spot" or are currently the Mayor of a coffee shop nobody else wants to go to. But there you go.
Social media is almost by definition, a shallow act.
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Re:
What you classify as social media?
Wikipedia is a social media.
Wikileaks is a social media.
Openstreetmaps is a social media.
Patientslikeme is a social media.
Youtbe is a social media where you can find this DEFCON 19: Build your own Synthetic Aperture Radar
Social media is not just Facebook and even inside Facebook there are groups of people dedicated to advance their own knowledge.
Social media actually makes people read more, it gets people into the habit of reading even if it is junk just like walking eventually if you want to run you will be able to do so and in the case of learning people can do it without leaving behind social media.
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Reading isn't automatically social or unsocial, although more often than not it is immediately unsocial. But so what?
Social media isn't automatically social or unsocial, although more often than not it is immediately social. But so what?
All of these become relative value judgements, and like someone else said, this debate has been going on since TV arrived, if not longer. I'm sure we could find some examples from earlier centuries if we tried.
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BOOKS VS SOCIAL MEDIA
Books expand your mind, encourage imagination, and spur evolution along it's path.
Social media devolves into a mob mentality while trying to establish a pecking order.
i.e. You never leave the playground, and learning is done through practice and research.
Social by definition does not imply learning as a rule.
Unless one of your "playmates" starts a class on the playground.
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Re: BOOKS VS SOCIAL MEDIA
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Nose
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A maioria dos livros, jornais, etc...
Salvo exce��o de alguma m�dia independente, o resto pouco mal ao estado de coisas faz.
As m�dias sociais s�o uma ferramenta mais eficaz aos planos de "a��o direta".
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Look at this
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wow.
They need no alibi, excuse, or justification.
As with most things, books or social media have their own merits, but the mistake is in trying use one to exclude the other. It's like cutting off an arm [or a nose] to spite the other.
Instead of using both as they were intended.
It's amazing that mr.Masnick inspired all of this writing with only a few paragraphs. If he's not thanking us for his paycheck, he should be.
My wife is a huge fb fan. I'm not. I don't agree with giving away any info without it being on purpose. And to help her remember to be conscious of what she writes, I've paraphrased Thomas Fuller to make his words work for our timeline.
"Many are the 'WISE' speeches of the foolish."
by the way... How many of you knew that fb won the right in court to claim ownership of anything with the words f... or b... ?
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Perhaps...
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Personally, I don't see why a person shouldn't have both, nor why high-quality online multi-person rapid conversation's any better or worse than the collected correspondence of the greats of any day: Adams/Jefferson, Sartre/de Beauvoir, etc. But to say that these conversations are comparable to good books is only to demonstrate that you don't know what goes into making, let alone reading, a good book, nor do you understand the tl;dr barrier and why it's important. Nor why the high-quality conversation's going on among people who read and write scholarly and literary books (among other things).
They're two different things, books and conversations, and they serve different purposes.
Hermes, if an editorial filter were applied to facebook, facebook would be worth about $15, because most of its content and users would be gone.
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Books
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Or we can go to Facebook, view more of my friends' incessant baby pictures, and be the 100th person to type "Ooh! So cute!" This is the chief difference. While there are obviously many exceptions both ways, the general rule is that reading books makes you smarter. Posting on the internet does not.
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