How Reading Books Instead Of News Made Me A Better Citizen
from the consuming-information dept
As the 2020 presidential race kicks into high-gear, I find myself telling friends about an important lesson I learned last time primary season rolled around. During the run-up to the 2016 election, as now, vitriol filled the headlines. Rather than well-informed, reading the internet often left me feeling emotionally exhausted, powerless, and alone. So many stories were urgent but not important, and certainly not actionable.
Frustrated, I decided to run an experiment. I read and engaged with dramatically less news, and spent that time reading books instead. I read ancient philosophy, fantastical adventures, historical biographies, scientific treatises, globetrotting thrillers, and mind-bending stories of magical realism. I followed my enthusiasm and read what I loved, challenging myself to think more deeply and broadly in the process.
After a few months, my life and outlook had changed completely. Reading was no longer an exercise in rubbernecking and literature armed me to face the challenges of the present with fresh eyes, seek out other points of view, and put the political turmoil into perspective. Taking ownership of my media diet turned the stories I read into sources of strength, fuel to fire my own personal and public life. My wife and I volunteered to host a Ugandan refugee in our home for nine months. I helped design a game that illustrated emerging vulnerabilities in American democracy. I co-created an internet public art project that raised money for ProPublica.
We are what we pay attention to. The stories we read don't just inform, entertain, or inspire, they shape our identities, become a part of us. These stories have consequences. The Allies were inspired to defeat the Nazis by stories of resisting oppression, protecting freedom, and ending humanitarian disaster. The Nazis were themselves inspired by stories of racial superiority, national dominance, and the return to a mythical past. Humans are capable of transcendence and unspeakable horror when we convince ourselves of the righteousness of our cause.
So I expanded my experiment into a novel that quickly grew into a trilogy. Bandwidth explores what happens when someone hijacks our attention in order to transform us into the person they want us to be. Borderless examines the rise of tech platforms and the decline of nation-states. Breach extrapolates what might come next and how to build new institutions for the internet age. My hope is that the Analog Series inspires readers to reassess their own most deeply held beliefs with candor, kindness, and healthy skepticism.
As candidates and special interest groups ruthlessly vie for your attention across the vast datascapes of the internet like gladiators in a digital Colosseum, remember that seizing control of your media diet is the first step toward acting with intention to realize your version of a better future.
***
Eliot Peper is the author of Breach, Borderless, Bandwidth, Cumulus, True Blue, Neon Fever Dream, and the Uncommon Series. His writing has appeared in the Verge, Tor.com, Harvard Business Review, VICE, OneZero, TechCrunch, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and he has given talks at Google, Comic Con, Future in Review, and SXSW.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: election, information overload, news, news consumption
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Oh wow, thanks for the deep philosophical insights, mighty thinker. And thanks techdirt for masquerading ads as articles.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Oh wow, thanks for the deep philosophical response to the article Anonymous Coward. You have enriched exactly no one at all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Thanks for being a fuckwit, fuckwit. Thinking about the human condition and acting on those thoughts would be so much less important and entertaining without a real downside to consider, like you.
I think the post author makes a rather good point which many people would do well to consider.
And i don't think that identifying oneself, nor pointing out where to find ones thinking in longer form, is "an advertisement diguised as an article". But any advertisement based on, "if you are interested in more of my stuff, here's where you can find it" via an unobtrusive link that you have to click on to see the link or go to the linked site is rather the best and most innocuous form of advertising in existence. We could do with more of that, over the other various advertising models.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Nobody forced you to read the article, y’know.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Balderdash, everyone knows TD employs magic code into their site that forces people to read articles they don't want to. How else would you explain people regularly complaining about reading articles that they could have easily ignored had that code not been there?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fake news
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I didn't deliberately opt out of the news in the last election cycle. I swore off news while I was in college. Having nothing better to do, I once spent a half hour watching a TV news broadcast which went 25 minutes without even making a passing allusion to anything that had happened that day. I decided the information density of that medium wasn't worth the trouble of straining it out.
So when the last election came around, I was already busy helping create electronic editions of public-domain books (for Project Gutenberg, etc.). Legal constraints meant that most of them were published before 1970; my priorities included books from before 1600; the history of mathematics, engineering, technology, and crafts; musicology--both art and folk music; natural sciences of all kinds; tours of museums and natural/historic sites--and old mysteries and science fiction. Along the way I helped post some 400 books for anyone to read; shared my priorities by my choices of books; learned some new priorities; and wrote a bit: mostly poetry and literary analysis.
I suppose somewhere elections, superb-owls, 1/4-of-the-world-series, and golf tournaments manage to carry on without me (insofar as they are able.) Not knowing whom to hate and slander, I end up hating less and slandering fewer people. Not knowing who is most successful at children's games, I don't know whom to despise. And I don't miss any of it. In fact, I don't have TIME for any of it.
I make time for reading Techdirt, Dilbert, and xkcd, though.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
yeah, 90% of the news media output is cr@p -- but 75% of books are cr@p content.
the hollow "read books" platitude has been around for centuries.
How does one know which books to read ?
There are over 33 million books in prin and hundreds of thousands new ones published each year.
How many books can one read in a year?
True, useful information is what you want -- the medium of its communication is unimportant, as long as it works effectiely.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Filtering the 24hr cycle
I've made my life easier by filtering all "news" that
a) wargames stuff that hasn't yet happened
b) forecasts the negative long term repercussions of what happened
That way, when I'm reading a news site, I can focus on the actual news.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You think reading news articles is bad you should try reading and also posting in the comments!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I resemble that remark!
…wait
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Can we flag this as funny and report it so it gets hidden?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The non-stop bad news disturbs me as well, especially the blatant disavowal of the principles that brought this country together, as most recently exemplified by the US Senate's inaction this week. I don't know how to stop the fascism that's sweeping the country, but I do find peace of mind via canvassing for my preferred presidential candidate, Elizabeth Warren.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"Read books, not news, to enrich your minds" is a nice enough message.
"I have published some books that encourage readers to enrich their minds" is also nice.
But when you say both in the same article, the latter message makes the former seem self-serving.
I have no objection to people promoting their own books on Techdirt. That's fine. And I'm certainly never going to argue against the benefits of reading. But saying, "You all should be reading more books, and you can start by reading mine," is only going to undermine the idea that you want people to read books for the sake of their own enrichment, rather than to sell copies of what you yourself have written.
It just feels like a slimy marketing tactic, even if it's meant sincerely.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Careful Eliot, you're triggering lots of people who are afraid of losing compliant drones from the outrage mob.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I would like to read books. When I was child I read many books because I have time for read books ,but now I am in college and I got too many assignments and I do not have enough time for reading. Then my cousin suggest me <a href="https://edubirdie.net/">edu bridie</a> and now I do my assignment by this and I got enough time for reading.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I love to read books but I like poetry much, poetry is the only way to express your whole like events in just few lines, If you are a pro poetry writer you can hire a Wikipedia page creators ( https://wikicreation.services/ ) to create Wikipedia page of yours
[ link to this | view in chronology ]