Kinda sick of books.
Conversation
Replying to
As in the sacralized class of paper objects in that form factor with a fetishistic culture of collection and display.
Still like the contents of many, but as much as possible I prefer almost any other form factor. Essays, newsletters, bumper stickers, ebooks...
4
1
30
Or more precisely, the class of things that center the word. As opposed to the link, the click, the image, the comic panel, the block (the newest kid on the, errr... block)...
1
12
The 2 biggest innovations in language in the last 25 years — the gif and the emoji — cannot even be properly rendered in books.
2
3
41
Only reason I write things that sometimes agglomerate into book-like objects is that I lack the skill to make more complex objects.
3
14
I’m not actually much of a reader. If you exclude easy-reading genre fiction, which is probably 90% of my book count (and for which I usually prefer movie/TV versions where available), I’m not actually much of a reader.
1
11
There’s 2 kinds of genuine book people: shredders and worshippers. Shredders actually read lots of tough books, remember what they say, and rip out lots of great quotes and passages (hence shredders) for use in the meme layer of media.
Yay shredders! 🙌
6
1
42
Worshippers kinda suck. They mostly read without digesting or shredding anything. They just turn into vague Straussian worshippers of statue-heads or something. Instead of inserting context appropriate quotes into the Discourse, they share photos of bookshelves 🤬
2
1
31
Yeah me too. I’ve been through occasional brief phases of crushing on words and phrases, and coming up with the occasional fun coinage, but I’m not really a lover of language per se, or a craftsman with a strong ear for it. More word-shopper than word-smith. Means, not ends.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
Kinda sick of words, myself .
3
1
16
I’ve been privately thinking for the last couple of years that I’m sort of aspirationally post-verbal. Only use words where more direct mechanisms don’t exist. Which unfortunately is “most of the time” for me.
2
13
😶
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
It’s good to let that part of our brain go fallow for a while, wait till words become a real necessity again. Right now they just feel like clutter.
2
6
Books: the og tldr
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
been over them for years abe.is/books-and-the-
2
6
When I first read Harry Potter I was underwhelmed by them as books. It’s only when they were turned into movies that I realized they were awesome movie raw material. A good book is an industrial intermediate material these days.
5
1
12
The west appears to have lost overt sacred rituals around books if they ever existed. They’re kinda tacit sacred objects where you feel a bit of guilt over (say) using them as doorstops or kindling. But no explicit rituals.
3
8
Growing up in India I was taught if you accidentally touch a book with a foot, to touch it with your hand and then touch your forehead. A gesture kinda like crossing yourself (symbolizing apologizing to Saraswati, goddess of knowledge). I think I was ~10 when I dropped the habit.
1
11
I don’t know if kids in India are still taught to do this, but traditionalists are still offended if you don’t.
Most parts of the world have a similar reverence if not the explicit ritual.
I think it’s an unhealthy reverence.
2
5
To get to the post-textual, post-verbal era, when words are for AIs and humans have to think in post-latent spaces where the AIs can’t reach, gotta get past this kind of reverence. We’re overdue for some healthy disrespect.
1
3
16
So long as GPT-25 digests a text, its done its job.
1
3
Attack and dethrone books!
Hail threadthulhu 🐙
1
1
5
All hail!
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
Long live the block
Hail threadthulu 
1
1
1
Someday (“when the tonguin’ is done”), we’ll see the age of books for what it has been: the first stage of the creation of cognitive fossil fuels. The real prize is the oil forming inside AIs right now.
2
14
Realizing I’m mildly triggered by any behavior that vaguely resembles prayer without actually being prayer in a traditional religious sense. Actual prayer I can tune out and ignore. But prayer directed at books, constitutions, music, art, Straussian Great Men... annoying.
1
7
There’s some story, I forget source, about a tyrant who promised not to burn a library of a conquered land but got around it by putting all their words in alphabetical order or something. I kinda like the spirit of that story a lot.
1
Things like Google n-grams effectively do something halfway to that. The “fossil fuel” UX of books.
1
1
Books are basically a historically contingent form factor for a much richer collective computing process. It’s a mistake to think that they’re the only UX for the underlying collective stream of consciousness let alone the best one.
6
1
16
Death of the author ftw. Mainlining Borg mind stream without the intercessionary figure of the author confusing matters by invoking some sort of platonic realm of idea traditions.
2
5
Imagine a world where memes and gifs and threadthulhus turn directly into Mars rovers and new Rick and Morty episodes without tediously bottlenecking through “books”
1
2
9
It’s not that they’re going to be entirely obsolete. They’ll just become one specialized UX among many for a subset of hive mind access.
2
1
4
I mean I’m writing one now (serialized) but only 1 in 3 of my book-sized ideas is also *book-shaped.* And that just shows my age/rigidities (and tbh hangover of youthful vanities). I suspect other things being equal, Zoomers will have 1 in 10 ideas in book form.
1
9




