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This is very good. Cc
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📣 New essay distilling one strand of some ongoing work✨ I argue that books lack a functioning model of how people learn—instead, they're (accidentally, invisibly) built around a model that's plainly false. Plus some early models for what to do about it. andymatuschak.org/books/
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Hmm makes me realize I’ve unconsciously concluded “books don’t work” (as a technology) for a while now. This is partly why I’ve been dragging my feet on book-length projects. There’s other reasons and demons, but this is a big one and has nothing to do with me personally.
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Writing an expository book is valuable for the *writer* to develop an arsenal. I’ve had way more impact —as measured by people doing & thinking differently— secretly quoting my writing in person at juuuust the right moment, than people reading and changing their own minds.
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Books aren't suited to learning practical skills. The best ones however, provide a deeper background and context of a topic than any other medium.
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Books were the pinnacle of education for a world two major technological changes behind this one. I've only bought four for educational purposes in the last decade, and all are gathering dust half-unread. (I still have an enduring love for fiction books, however.)
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Books were invented to preserve knowledge, not to transmit it. A scribe’s job was preserving and archiving information for the future. Writing is compressing information into sentences. Reading is decompression. The book is a seed. Knowledge is germination.