Stephen - I've been a written word enthusiast and hard copy reader, letter writer and book club starter who is very interested in more discourse on this topic. In terms of retention of content, my mind is able to pull specific threads and characters by name, years after reading hard copy, yet with on-line content these themes rarely come back to me vividly or resonate as long over time. Just one brief anecdote to share.
That's a good example, Michael. With hard copy books, I sometimes recall not only the placement on the page, the chapter of the book, *and* where the book sat in my bookshelf.
I worry that this comes across as false nostalgia, "things were better back then..." But really I suspect it's just a product of our evolution: we are embodied beings and thus have an easier time encoding memories with a physical object.
Tell me about "embodied beings"? I've heard this before and want to know your interpretation. Btw I heard you on Colin McEnroe and started following your Substack.
I agree there is familiar comforts that make up a good book read and you have to commit your eyes and ears and even touch simultaneously, which may help create memory. I also can recall book specifics, like Akira in How To Stop Time (Matt Haig) who doesn't show up until the final quintile, and briefly , but right on the top of my tongue (yesterday's recall to a friend reading book).
By embodied I just meant we have flesh and blood bodies. That means we learn in a different, likely more physical way than, say, an AI system training on training data.
And I’ll have to read Haig’s “How to Stop Time.” I’ve heard that it may be better than “The Midnight Library” although that one became the bestseller.
I’m interested in more on this Stephen. Over the course of this last academic year I’ve led a middle-school “book club” where we’ve primarily read print books and, despite all the noise about young people not reading, I’ve been really impressed by how engaged my kids have been with print. We all bring our books to our meetups and you can see where we are, point out the sections we like. Long live print!
That’s great to hear, Tom. If students have the same edition, it’s so much easier to reference a page number (as opposed to a percentage complete on Kindle). And I’m hopeful the books are giving them a richer experience than the “scan and search” methods they learn to answer multiple choice questions for standardized tests.
Stephen - I've been a written word enthusiast and hard copy reader, letter writer and book club starter who is very interested in more discourse on this topic. In terms of retention of content, my mind is able to pull specific threads and characters by name, years after reading hard copy, yet with on-line content these themes rarely come back to me vividly or resonate as long over time. Just one brief anecdote to share.
That's a good example, Michael. With hard copy books, I sometimes recall not only the placement on the page, the chapter of the book, *and* where the book sat in my bookshelf.
I worry that this comes across as false nostalgia, "things were better back then..." But really I suspect it's just a product of our evolution: we are embodied beings and thus have an easier time encoding memories with a physical object.
Tell me about "embodied beings"? I've heard this before and want to know your interpretation. Btw I heard you on Colin McEnroe and started following your Substack.
I agree there is familiar comforts that make up a good book read and you have to commit your eyes and ears and even touch simultaneously, which may help create memory. I also can recall book specifics, like Akira in How To Stop Time (Matt Haig) who doesn't show up until the final quintile, and briefly , but right on the top of my tongue (yesterday's recall to a friend reading book).
By embodied I just meant we have flesh and blood bodies. That means we learn in a different, likely more physical way than, say, an AI system training on training data.
And I’ll have to read Haig’s “How to Stop Time.” I’ve heard that it may be better than “The Midnight Library” although that one became the bestseller.
I’m interested in more on this Stephen. Over the course of this last academic year I’ve led a middle-school “book club” where we’ve primarily read print books and, despite all the noise about young people not reading, I’ve been really impressed by how engaged my kids have been with print. We all bring our books to our meetups and you can see where we are, point out the sections we like. Long live print!
That’s great to hear, Tom. If students have the same edition, it’s so much easier to reference a page number (as opposed to a percentage complete on Kindle). And I’m hopeful the books are giving them a richer experience than the “scan and search” methods they learn to answer multiple choice questions for standardized tests.