I have never read a book in my life. I might as well be illiterate, and most people around me might as well be too. Most libraries are vacant, and bookstores are gone. But all these people are doing fine - we put anything down on paper, and despite its incoherence it seems fine by standards that have stooped for reasons I do not know. I can turn in something that makes absolutely no sense, and an instructor from a decent school will tell me that he enjoyed it. Or an instructor won’t enjoy it, but since most people don’t write anything comprehensible anymore I’ll still be fine. I can cruise through my education and get a job while barely having read much at all. Everyone frequents some variant of flimsy entertainment - cable news, cartoons, social media - so why bother trying to read anything worthwhile anyways if nobody else is? Does reading actually make you more curious, more intelligent, more human?
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Notes -
The format of media influences its form.
Books encourage 200+ pages of material with a common theme. That is the ideal format for deep exploration of an idea.
Blogs, articles, etc are optimized for their ability to draw in drive-by readers. At best they don't reward depth, at worst they punish it.
We call these manifestos, and blogs are fine for them. I'm sure you can even find plenty -- though you probably don't want to read them.
A manifesto is about some perceived ill in the world and a proposed answer or solution. 200+ page deep explorations are useful for far more than manifestos.
But the most important things about books versus other formats is that they end, and they aren’t changed after publication. That means that, unlike this very reply, they are certain to be the same as when you first read them, and unless you get a later edition or a sequel, they contain exactly the amount the author and publisher agreed to publish.
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