Text Is King

The reason video is winning is because you can make a living on video advertising. It's not really possible in this day to make a living on writing, outside of specific niches. So people who are good at writing use that skill to make video scripts, not blogs or books.

Text is searchable, skippable, scrollable, compact, transmissible, and accessible in a way that audio and video have never managed to be.

I would do more video, but video editing is really difficult.

I think that today’s video influencers have gotten really good at “one take and done” recording.

I couldn’t do that. I’m way too much of a perfectionist. I always edit my text, and I’ve been writing all my life. I don’t think that I’ve ever written something perfectly, the first time (including HN comments. I tend to go back and edit for correctness and clarity).

A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed for a podcast. The process was fascinating, and the woman that did it, obviously does a great deal of editing and refinement. I don’t know if I have that much patience.

People might still be reading, statistically speaking. But what are they reading?

Almost everyone I talk to offline either reads fantasy, trashy romance, or feel-good self help books. I gotta tell ya, we all have our cheap pleasures now and then, but rarely do I meet anyone who reads anything remotely profound or thought-provoking. The only exception might be my father who reads a lot of historical fiction and non-fiction.

Maybe I'm just hanging in the wrong crowds.

In terms of the sources the author cites, exactly how much should we trust them? For example, book sales may have increased in recent years, but are people actually reading them? I remember a recent statistic where it turned out most people who buy vinyl records don't even own a record player; what if people are buying books so they can sit on a shelf?

And what's so special about books in particular, anyway? What's wrong with reading articles and webpages? I'd be more interested in whether those are declining since they are less tethered to entertainment, like books are.

Text is my favourite minimalistic medium. I keep a minimum eye on regular news through teletext and tech news via Slashdot and here because there are barely any distractions from the core content.

It's also very flexible in that I can immediately return to a previous sentence without needing intermediate steps like rewinding a video or audio format. I can copy parts into another document for reasons. It's easier to search. This is also what makes learning from a book so much better than video (besides not needing batteries for it).

Back before written deeds and the county clerk keeping track of land ownership, it was handled by memory. So they would have a young boy witness the land transfer, on the theory that if there was a dispute 30 or 40 years into the future, he could testify that the transfer happened. And to help him remember, they would nail him in the 'nads. Point being, dudes getting nailed in the 'nads has a rich historical tradition that pre-dates writing.

Isaac Asimov, "The Ancient and the The Ultimate", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1973

https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v044n01_...

Even if people read fewer books cover to cover, text still seems to be the medium where ideas actually get nailed down, argued over, and preserved

Another advantage of text over the long-term: it is accessible for discussion.

Let us say that you want to analyze, say, drinking culture in Ireland. You could write documentary on it, or do a fictional character study. However, those require actors, camera equipment, editing tools and time, and it generally extremely expensive and time consuming. A quick TikTok video may be a bit cheaper than a full-scale film, but still needs some of that equipment and cinematography skills.

Music is not much better. You need skills in singing, translating ideas of rhythmic lyrics, as well as supplies for instruments.

Writing, however, is simple. At minimum, all you need is paper and skill in articulating ideas. Almost anyone worthy to rationally ponder a topic already has the skills to put it to paper (assuming that they have gone through a proper First-World education and know reading and writing).

Text is also one of the easiest to share. A picture is worth a thousand words, but that poses problems in sending all that information. Plain text, however (or even most rich-text formats) can be transferred to anyone over almost any protocol, even rudimentary ones such as word-of-mouth. Ideas shared through text can be sent at an unrivaled pace.

What is dying when it comes to text is entertainment and some areas of non-fiction, things which really are not the strength of written language; it is capable of these thing but other mediums are far better at it, but even in those areas it has some strengths and ability which other mediums lack. The primary strength of written language is communication, it removes the abstraction and all those things which hinder communication like the look of frustration on my face being taken as frustration with the person I am speaking to when it is really frustration with my own difficulties in expressing what I want to express and find those right words which will not be taken any other way than as I meant them.

Writing is not dying and is not going to die anytime soon, people use it more than they ever have for communication in this texting and emailing world and writing will be continued to be used for those areas where it is undeniable king. What can explore the inner world of people better than the written word? what can develop and explore idea to the extent and depth of the written word? All those unfilmable books that keep being read are works which exploit the strengths of the written word to express things which no other medium can without a great deal of abstraction and becoming so experimental that only a tiny niche can appreciate them and a much smaller niche than the niche that is literature.

"Perhaps there are frontiers of digital addiction we have yet to reach. Maybe one day we’ll all have Neuralinks that beam Instagram Reels directly into our primary visual cortex, and then reading will really be toast."

Even then, smart people will care about dissecting ideas, explore new concepts and broaden their understanding - and for most of it, Text Is King.

In an LLM world text will also be is king.

Sure, LLMs can understand images and video, but when you make your program spit debug text you make it easier and faster for Claude Code to iterate on it and fix any problems.

See how much value does a text UI program like Claude Code provide, it really doesn't need anything else than cannot be done in a terminal.

I understand the first paragraph is set to draw you in but honestly I was thing with every sentence: speak for yourself. None of it describes me. It's also not my experience in general, but maybe me and those around me are odd?

Boring books? Sure I grab the phone. I’m probably as addicted as anyone. Bobbiverse? I drop the phone and read all five parts during any spare minute I have.

So there’s that anacdote.

Not all reading is the same. In other words, I wish this article had differentiated between different types of reading. For example, I read that many young adults have picked up reading "new adult" genre books. They enjoy the physical experience of an analog medium and consume one edition after another of popular series. This sounds fine at first, but the content is problematic. These books are not literature, and they may convey problematic views of behavior. For example, they may perpetuate outdated views of relationships between men and women, portraying them as unequal and reproducing clichéd stereotypes from the last millennium.

In short, the article focuses only on the amount of reading, but the content is also important. This should be part of the equation.

As I counter claim to the one that today is more recorded than ever, one could suggest that these recordings are not guaranteed to last long, not even the span of one lifetime.

Elite people don't take books as seriously anymore. That's what's happening. The prestige of serious books is diminishing. The referencing of serious books in mainstream culture is diminishing. If 8 billion people all read one shit book that's all well and good - literacy is saved. But if the people who currently influence events do not read good books, care to be seen to read good books and consider the opinions of the writers of good books important ... then I think it's not good.

Referring to a recent debate on HN, if text is king, what is queen?

>> Books are disappearing from our culture, and so are our capacities for complex and rational thought.

are they? maybe it's a cultural thing or maybe the author's perspective is from 1st world countries. here where I live ppl can't stand reading books on digital devices (not counting tech bros in my N)