morning boy's letters on serious matters and commentary on funny things aplenty
Indian schools are time suckers. The entire education system probably is.
They have a hard time promoting ‘reading’ among the kids. And on top of that, they do not leave much time for the kids to develop any sort of reading habit.
2 situations below:
Schools + Incompetent Teachers + Mobile Phones + Tuition Classes
Poor Schools + Poor Towns + Poor Villages + Poor Teachers
How many are reading and how many are writing for SEO?
That reminds me, I was reading a terrific book on reading before my June trip. Got to resume that. Reading.
Trajectories of words over long times, perhaps those are better data, available through reading and more reading and more reading, to lead us to some great stuff.
But there can’t be a term Data Reader. There can be but it could be just as hollow as Data Scientist.
Dear Parent,
Who calls such amazing fragments of writing THE WASTE BOOKS! But Georg Christoph Lichtenberg did. And his writings were popular among the finest of minds.
It contains aphorisms, fragments and little gems written by him way way back.
Going by the size of every fragment, it would delight the youngster. But to be able to read such short fragments and make sense of them, one has to have done some good reading earlier, as inadvertent preparation.
But the youngster doesn’t have much time until college, and after college there’s no time for learning through reading. Are my impressions correct? Am I living in a different world?
The youngster doesn’t read books because books use paper, and using paper to make books is against the idea of sustainability.
This is a joke. And so is the youngster.
Yesterday, I wrote that computer screens are not quite made for reading.
But quite obviously, plenty is written on twitter and facebook and such platforms and all of it is read on the screens.
Besides, I write on this blog and the few readers who read these posts also read on the screens.
Either the posts have to be short or they have to be written in a way that screens don’t hinder the process of reading.
As for myself, reading beyond certain lengths on screens is so difficult.
Upon a tap on the app icon what kind of scroll comes into being? What fills the mobile screen?
Laptop screens are harder to fill than mobile screens. The scrolling thumb is harder to stop on the mobile screen than it is on the laptop screen.
I wonder if computer was really meant for the reader in the first place. Of course, it wasn’t. Computing was the point. To the computer was added the internet. In fact, video games appeared much before most of the material meant for reading on computer screens.
Computer screens were squarish earlier. Desktops and laptops typically promoted landscape orientation. Though I am not sure if portrait orientation would’ve aided reading.
I haven’t tried reading on the tablet screen but generally it’s been hard reading on any kind of screen-mobile, laptop or desktop.
First textbooks screwed the reading experience, now they are the digital screens. It’s tough becoming a reader.
Even the Kindle app can’t turn a screen into a reading tool. I do see folks on Linkedin reading long essays though.
The way I see things happening, content writing is happening primarily for SEO.
What’s SEO? Or what is it for? For pleasing Google.
It’s another matter though that a big part of Google’s way of ranking and listing may still be a black box for most.
But, let’s say, it isn’t a black box and most of us know precisely how it works.
After pleasing Google, the content has to cross the barrier called human reader. Unless, you say that Google ranking is all that counts for the reader or non-reader, and that all the writing is meant to just please Shri Google.
All the bulleting and keywording that you indulge in, does it bore the reader, does the style appeal to the reader, does it help the reader make sense of the complex matter that is your product or service?
Oh, your SEO optimized content writing + the ridiculous graphical confusion on the screen converts the non-reader who becomes your customer?! Hats off!
How do kids become readers?
What does it really depend on?
We clearly see examples where parents are readers and kids also become readers.
We see examples where parents are not readers but kids become readers.
Plenty of examples where parents are not readers and kids are also not readers.
*When I speak of ‘readers’, I exclude ‘textbook lickers’.
Every situation has the potential to attract its own dumbness.
– Sid Soni
And humans are just carriers of dumbness. Anyone could be such a carrier. You, myself, anyone.
What do I mean?
I wrote an essay for Women’s Day. Obviously, I want friends and acquaintances to read what I’ve written. So I shared the essay with some of them on Whatsapp.
The essay is titled Platform To Think. Upon receiving the pdf file, a lady responds, “this is for?”
I said, “This is for reading.”
This blog is also for reading. Books are also for reading.
Interested in reading that essay? Here you go.
What makes reading a special system of behavior?
Think about it, can you ever be an ‘aggressive’ reader?
The other day I used an expression mad reader in a conversation with a friend. Could I have used aggressive reader?
There is nothing like aggressive reading. Even robots meant to crawl the words can’t be aggressive in crawling. They can be fast, but not aggressive.
That says something about reading shaped behavior.
Did you ever go to a gym? Did you ever think about exercising and matters like that? Of course, you would have had to walk as a human being who has a body… Reading your thoughts and books gives me a feeling of how much and how intensely you would’ve read on any given day. That would leave almost nothing else for you to do at the end of the day…
Until next time…
That’s a misleading question.
I meant to ask “How many read these thoughts I am posting”?
In the last couple of days since I’ve started sharing the links to these posts as Whatsapp Statuses, I see that at least 300-400 folks see each of these statuses on their screens. How many actually read? 3, 5, 10!
No it isn’t anyone’s fault, but such is the system that has gotten created and such is the density of inanity that needs to be penetrated. And such are the processes of lifestyles.
I sense reading done in certain ways accelerates learning.
What does it mean?
Accelerates in comparison to what?
In comparison to school learning, to tuition learning, to learning that happens by sitting in spaces called classrooms and listening to folks who act as teachers.
I have to postpone every single thing till I have a good fill of Niklas Luhmann’s thoughts…
Words are trailing reality and so the mind hasn’t yet caught up with reality.
Hello Mr Luhmann, thank you very much for writing so much.
It would help to make ourselves as reading systems. Let me add an adjective and rephrase: amazing reading systems.
Google and plenty of computing is first and foremost a reading system.
One can have quite a few descriptions of such machines, and the quality of writing that they read, but would you deny them being incredible reading systems?
Happened to read a few things on different websites that offer training in ‘content writing’ largely for the purpose of digital marketing. In all that I could read, I didn’t find a single mention of ‘reading’ or developing a habit of reading.
It’s amazing! Just amazing!
Imagine, I keep repeating you need to be a good reader to be a good online shopper… Folks want to teach ‘content writing’ without mentioning ‘reading’. I am not out of touch!
Turning the cover page,
Opening the book,
Reading till you forget to stop,
Reading till you get tired or sleepy or bored,
Reading such that you are breathless with ideas,
Reading such that you just can’t finish reading the entire book;
That’s alright,
That’s what a book is meant to do.
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