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SonyaNelson
Learning to read a book without distractions can be an art, especially in ...
Hunde Prutter
I've often made the same SNR analogy in many aspects of life: intellectual, ...
I admit it: I'm reading a book
Bill Schweber
1/4/2012 1:47 PM EST
Lots of people make resolutions for the New Year, and one of mine is to read more books.
No, I am not trying to be a snob or even sound snobbish. It’s just that with the non-stop onslaught of "stuff"—news and pseudo-news, TV, streaming video clips, breathless celebrity coverage, emails, etc—it's easy to have your mental "noise" level go up, up, up while the actual retained signal (or signals and information even worth retaining) goes down.
So my hope is that reading books will increase the signal while attenuating some of the noise, and let me "escape" the endless rat-a-tat-tat for a while. [In his excellent essay The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler wrote "…all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy…to say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob…]
So, which books? Fiction, non-fiction, escapist, whatever, doesn’t matter, I say. But reviews of three books recently in The Wall Street Journal look promising, and are in the areas about which I like to read (all are written by engineers/scientists, not journalists, BTW):
•Physics on the Fringe, by Margaret Wertheim, looks at the balance of science and skepticism—and the need for both, see here. Sure, we have the "nutcase theories" about anything and everything, but sometimes those theories turn out to be correct and eventually accepted (dinosaurs, plate tectonics, Copernicus, quasicrystals, the separate Lunar orbiter/lander configuration—the list goes on and on).
•Models Behaving Badly, by Emanuel Derman, examines hard-science models such as the ones we use, and also financial models, which are accorded so much stature but shouldn't be, says the author, see here. Given how important models are in science, and how they can be used and misused (intentionally or not), this looks like a good one.
•Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique, by John Gribbin, here, explores the issue of the many so-called "habitable planets" we think we have seen, why there doesn’t seem to be life on them, and why it is unlikely that there is—as far as we can tell, of course. (Of course, who would have thought there were living creatures—not just microorganisms—thriving here on Earth in the deepest, darkest recesses of the ocean, apparently using hot sulfur venting from the ocean floor as their energy source?)
Unlike many other well-intentioned resolutions, I think I have a reasonable chance of keeping this one; after all, I did pretty well with my summer re-reading list, here.
What are your technically oriented resolutions, if any, for 2012: learn Android programming? Finally understand filters? Write better, cleaner code? Thoroughly document your designs and code? Are there others? ◊
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EREBUS
1/4/2012 7:01 PM EST
As an author, I still prefer paper books, though I sell mine in both forms. There are advantages to ebooks for searching, but for reading, you can't beat a cozy chair, a fine wine and a good book on a cold winters night.
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hm
1/4/2012 9:01 PM EST
Same is true for playing games outdoor and not just watching them on TV. This also provides lots of fulfillment.
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Brian Fuller2
1/5/2012 7:07 PM EST
Bill, the most important question I have (tangential to your technically oriented resolutions) is how are you reading these books? Ink-on-paper or digitally?
I've finally dived into the iPad pool after carefully observing my wife's usage for a year. I'm reading a lot of articles in the iPad on various reader platforms. I haven't yet read a complete book (I've started Teddy Roosevelt's biography though, a freebie).
On my nightstand though I have Ian Kershaw's "The End" and the biography of Hunter Thompson. I find ink-on-paper as my last engagement of the day calms me down immensely and makes for better sleep.
But that's just me. I'm interested in other use cases and opinions!
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rpell2
1/6/2012 1:49 PM EST
Well on *my* nightstand I have my iPod, which I find far more convenient for bedtime reading than a heavy, cumbersome paper book. Here are just a few of the full-length books I've read on it in recent months (all digital downloads from my local library system):
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Ayn Rand and the World She Made
Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper
End the Fed
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer
The Devil in the White City: A Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America
All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal
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Max the Magnificent
1/5/2012 9:32 PM EST
Hi Bill - of the books you mention, I read "Alone in the Universe" and I can highly recommend it - I'll be posting a review on Programmable Logic Designline as soon as I get a spare moment...
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BicycleBill
1/5/2012 10:50 PM EST
Brian, for these books, I am still a paper/ink person, too. I reserve them at the local library and they email when the book is available. There's something magical about getting the email at some point (unknown) in the future, saying your item has arrived! And yes, a dead-tree book can be very calming, especially when I physically flag certain passage with Post-its--yes, you can do that too on an e-book, but it is just not as satisfying to me.
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sharps_eng
1/6/2012 6:19 PM EST
When reading a book for information, I frequently flip back over passages, maybe keep my finger in a reference section or on an important diagram. To do this in an ebook requires a new set of control skills and several copies of a doc open at once in different places. Not all readers allow this.
When reading for entertainment, an ebook supports linear reading without a problem.
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tjwal
1/16/2012 5:58 PM EST
The original kindle had that problem but I don't think the newer versions do. Depending on the App the iPad allows you to jump around fairly easily.
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Neo1
1/7/2012 12:03 AM EST
I tend to use my ipad foe technical reading but still love paper for others.
You are spot on regrading the onslaught of information on our senses and nothing better than a book to escape from that cacophony. I have recently picked up "The age of Capital" by Hobsbawm.
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Battar
1/7/2012 3:01 PM EST
I have books that are 30,40,50 years old. I've read books that my father bought deacdes ago. On the other hand, I don't even have access to hardware that can open a file I created 20 years ago. E-books just don't have the durability of paper books. When the hardware becomes obsolete, you either lose the book or spend time and effort tranferring your library to new formats. We've been down that road with vinyl-CD-MP3.
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tjwal
1/16/2012 5:56 PM EST
I've read ebooks that are over 100 years old.
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jonnydoin
1/8/2012 11:46 PM EST
@Battar hit an interesting point. Paper books seem to retain one advantage over any other technology-based medium, which is durability.
My father left us a library of almost 3.000 volumes that took 2 rooms in our house. I can't claim to read nearly a tenth of those books, but I can take one in my hands today and see his margin notes and text markings.
On the other hand I have over 10.000 PDF datasheets and technical books, that can be saved in a single microSD card. I can access them via a cloud filesystem from my tablet. Some of these files have already more than 20 years.
A few years ago the question was how we could access electronic information centuries in the future, like we can for paper books. Today it is clear that the technology layer we wrapped our information on will always be able to access the data, through legacy file formats and translation systems.
Unless total anihilation happens, the information fabric may well be much more resilient than paper or even rock engravings.
But something seems to be missing, like the fingerprint stains and earmarks of old books, a piece of personal contact that cannot be captured or reproduced in electronic form.
- Jonny
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BicycleBill
1/9/2012 8:45 AM EST
Jonny--I am not as optimistic about the long-term viability of e-based storage (cloud, etc). Too much has to be in place and working for it to succeed. So far, history leans against that: we have data from the 1950/60/70/80ss on tapes etc that are unreadable: tape is flaky, physical drive is gone, software drivers are gone, formats are unknown, etc.
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Carlos1966
1/9/2012 11:55 AM EST
My wife just bought me a 3G Kindle Touch (sans ads). It's great. I just went on a trip and was able to pack the equivalent of many hundreds of pounds of books in less than half a pound. I still love paper books of course and value the strengths of both mechanisms. As far as temporal toughness, the electronic formats have far more upside. People are comparing mature technologies, thousands of years old (the various techniques of writing on physical materials) to very new technologies only a few decades in the making. In that short span, we've already made significant strides. The very ease with which we copy and translate electronic text into new forms practically guarantees their survival.
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tjwal
1/16/2012 6:04 PM EST
I like e-ink for reading text, but I have found some books that are multi-media. For example Amazon had a free book on Wine Tasting. On the kindle there were section marked as "unavailable on this device". When I read the same book using the kindle App on an iPad, those missing sections were videos. I can think of many uses for multimedia books, how-to books, text books, or just some soft music that goes with the fine wine you're enjoying with your evening read.
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Hunde Prutter
1/25/2012 8:32 AM EST
I've often made the same SNR analogy in many aspects of life: intellectual, artistic, spiritual. When you turn down the noise you'll find the subtle signals of beauty, truth, significance, and the divine. How is it that we ever fall back into the noise? Wasn't technology suppose to ennoble us?
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SonyaNelson
5/21/2012 10:11 PM EDT
Learning to read a book without distractions can be an art, especially in today’s world where we are bombarded by “noise” as you call it from various sources like the TV, computer, phones, and even tablets. I find myself having to turn off the notifications on my iPad to be able to read a book on it in peace.
Sonya - http://www.milestonereading.com
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