People love to utter phrases like “data is the new oil” or “data is the new gold.” When we hear these phrases, we immediately think of businesses and big data, not the simple aspects of our daily lives. However, this obsession with data seeps into every crevice of our existence, even when the data is worthless. The reality is that people find activities less valuable, or even pointless, unless they have data about them. This is like Nikola Tesla, who had a terrible meal if his portions weren’t divisible by three.
Many can’t just wake up well rested after a good night’s sleep. They need to confirm using data from a sleep tracker, ensuring that their sleep duration, O2 saturation, and heart rate variability fall within specific ranges. In many cases, reality is overridden by data, despite the fact that devices aren’t foolproof. When your device conflicts with your reality, the device wins because… data.
Modern readers are also data-obsessed. They hunger for a wealth of statistics and datapoints that they can poke, prod, and analyze. They seem more infatuated with data about their reading than the reading itself. As it so often does, our modern world, with its hyperfocus on optimization, shifts our attention away from what matters and leads us to optimize the wrong things. This result leaves us worse off while giving us the illusion of productivity.
Reading Data Obsession
In my previous post on reading, one thing I failed to mention was people’s obsession with data about their reading. As I mentioned in that post, I prefer physical copies of books, but I also have an eReader. In 2026, I switched from a Kindle to a Kobo as my primary eReader. As I poked around the Kobo community, I found that people were very excited about StoryGraph coming to Kobo.
For those unfamiliar, StoryGraph is an application that seems to suck the value and fun out of reading. StoryGraph has three main features: reading stats, personalized recommendations (including mood-based recommendations), and a read-with-friends feature. None of which enhances the reading experience. However, all of which are detrimental.
Read With Friends
The read-with-friends feature is a clear drawback. Yes, please interrupt the flow and focus of my reading so I can see what one of my dumb friends has to say about it. This provides the same type of distraction as social media, now available on your dedicated reading device.
Algorithmic Shoving Match
People will argue with me about algorithmic recommendations until the heat death of the universe. They tell me how AI is much better than other forms of recommendation. I’m sure some will swear by the value it provides. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t benefited from algorithmic recommendations myself, so fair enough. Despite this, mediating everything through algorithms isn’t the great idea it’s cracked up to be.
First of all, you take a social activity, getting recommendations from others, and turn it into an anti-social one, taking whatever recommendations the algorithm spits out. People may say, if the recommendations are good, who cares? Maybe. But other forms of discovery may provide even better value.
Ultimately, the algorithm removes any chance from the equation. There is never any room for happy accidents. Every decision is bent towards the mean, eliminating any chance of discovery as you are shoved towards the narrow selection of books that others “like you” have read. However, this article is about data, so let’s look at that.
The Data
The image below shows stats from StoryGraph. Not a single stat being tracked here is useful for your reading experience. In fact, I’d argue they are the opposite.
Describing the data from left to right and top to bottom, we have, who gives a shit, irrelevant, pointless, and stupid. What’s displayed is data for data’s sake and tells you nothing useful. Let’s start with Pace and end with the number of books and pages.
Pace
What does the Pace chart even tell you? Nothing. Not all books are created equal. Some are harder to read than others. Some authors even make up their own language, and still others contain dense technical content. There’s nothing to track and nothing to optimize. This data is irrelevant.
Despite its irrelevance, whenever data is shown, people tend to want to “optimize” that data. Taking actionable steps based on this pace data can mean you beat yourself up about nothing at all. Maybe you purposefully try to read faster to optimize your pace and, in doing so, degrade your comprehension. Maybe you chose different books that are easier to read. Regardless, this isn’t good for your reading experience.
Moods
What about Moods? It’s pointless to keep a historical record of this data. Just imagine what the chart would look like for someone who is goth. Like, what are they supposed to do? Balance their Poe with some comedy to provide levity for their tortured soul? Call me NightPain.
I guess Mood is intended to be a check yourself before you wreck yourself, but it’s just pointless. Read what you are in the mood for, and read what you want. Life is too short for anything else. Obsessing over balancing your reading mood can diminish the value of the reading experience, nudging you in different directions for absolutely no purpose.
Ratings
Tracking your average rating of books is just plain stupid. I mean, all of your values are going to be right-skewed, heavily weighted toward the high end. Why wouldn’t they? Who spends time reading a book they’d give 1.5 stars? The reality is, nobody keeps reading a bad book unless it’s for some other purpose, such as a class or research.
Number of Books and Pages
Of all the data shown, the number of books and pages will be the most contentious. Let’s strip reading down to its core and focus on the benefits. What does the number of books you’ve read tell you about the benefits you received from reading? More specifically, what does the number of pages read tell you about the benefits you receive? Does reading fewer books mean that you’ve gotten less value? By now, it should be obvious that this data tells you nothing.
For those who still think this data is relevant, let’s consider that War and Peace, with its approximately 560k words, is one book. It’s easy for one large book to throw off your statistics.
Regardless of length, as I previously mentioned, some books are more difficult to read than others, but this doesn’t make them less valuable. However, given that long books will throw off your stats, you may be tempted to only read smaller books to keep your stats up. That doesn’t sound very valuable for your reading experience.
I have no idea how many books I read last year, or the year before that. Not having data doesn’t bother me because it has nothing to do with the value I gained from my reading.
Despite being an irrelevant metric, people love tracking how many books they read. Knowing their number means they can talk about it online. Reading becomes something to be performed, and that performance is an important part of reading for these people.
Still, some may claim that setting a target for reading a number of books gives people a goal to shoot for. First of all, you don’t need an app for that. Second, how does that number relate to the value from reading? Some may say that setting this goal forces them to set time aside for reading. Okay, but if the number of books is just a proxy for something else, then measure the proxy.
Ultimately, if people are looking for a way to optimize their reading, it’s not about the number of books, words, or pages. It’s about time.
Optimizing Reading
True optimization of reading requires manipulating factors that lie outside the pages of a book. It involves an investment of time, space, and attention.
If you are looking to truly optimize your reading, the most important thing you can do is dedicate time to it. Without dedicating time, there’s no way to build a habit. It’s the same when you are trying to start a workout routine. Find the time and schedule that work for you, and do your best to stick with them. The more you do it, the easier it will get.
You also need to create the space for reading. Trying to read surrounded by distractions isn’t a recipe for success. However, as a positive effect, the better you get at focused reading, the better you get at tuning out distractions. In the meantime, do your best to keep distractions to a minimum. Silence devices and notifications. Utilize do-not-disturb mode if necessary. Better yet, keep your devices in a different room.
Attention is required for reading. I know, attention is in short supply these days. Deep reading is an exercise with multiple benefits, including increased attention. However, you need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. If you haven’t read in a while, you’ll experience some discomfort. You may get easily distracted, your mind may drift, and you have to reread passages. This is because your brain has been rewired. Don’t get frustrated or beat yourself up about it. Just stick with it, you’ll see the change.
Conclusion
Data has become a security blanket. Something we are happy to have, whether it provides value or not. It’s there if we need it. However, whenever we are shown data, we need to ask how it’s valuable to whatever we are trying to accomplish. This will differentiate between data that’s truly helpful and data as a distraction.
Accidents aren’t always bad. That’s why we have the phrase “happy accidents.” When algorithms are involved, we never leave room for chance or happy accidents. Some would call this a feature, but I call it a bug.
Here’s a secret: turning books into statistics won’t bring AGI, cures for cancer, utopia, or any number of useful inventions that we are told are merely 12 to 18 months away. This activity also won’t bring their users wisdom. As a society, we are told that if we don’t let companies freely pillage the intellectual work of our past and present, we won’t get the life of leisure we are promised. But turning War and Peace into statistics won’t lead to significant breakthroughs. It won’t even bring knowledge… for you.
I believe that many of the people who work at the big AI companies know that training on a large corpus of non-domain-related works won’t lead to AGI or significant breakthroughs in areas such as cancer research, but they do know it may lead to breakthroughs in manipulation, and that has them interested.
Project Panama: Books Into Statistics
Recently, the Washington Post had an article about Anthropic’s Project Panama, a secret project to destructively scan every book on the planet. The image is shocking, and the whole situation feels dirty, which is probably why Anthropic tried to keep it a secret. Although it was found that they didn’t break any laws, they tried to keep it secret because they knew this would have a negative public perception. Mission accomplished.
In one sense, this is an attempt to obtain untainted training data. The internet is submerged in AI slop after the launch of ChatGPT. AI slop is good enough for the internet, but not so good for AI training. AI models tend to degrade when trained on their own outputs, a condition known as model collapse. So, instead of a model getting better, it gets worse. Seems models know what’s better for them than we do.
But the quest for untainted training data isn’t the whole story. If you are trying to scan every book on the planet, then you’ve made a decision to ingest and train AI on books of all kinds, inaccurate books, dated books, and even “bad” books. In short, accuracy isn’t the goal here.
Okay, so what’s a “bad” book? I mean books with universally accepted bad ideas, poor stories, poor writing, and many other issues. Trying to train on all books means you’ve made a conscious decision to also train on material such as Mein Kampf and The Turner Diaries. That’s right, you’ve “trained” on it, not assigned it to an AI model as homework for a classroom discussion. There are a few things I can say with 100% certainty, although I can say this: there is nothing in the works of books like Mein Kampf that will cure cancer.
Bad books shouldn’t be eliminated, although bad for AI, they can be beneficial for humans. You can always stop reading a poor novel or other books you feel aren’t providing proper value for your effort. As for books with bad ideas, when a human reads one, they can do so from a given perspective, trying to formulate a certain understanding. They can even be read with the intent of identifying and avoiding certain conditions in the future. Only a fool would think reading a book with bad ideas is always bad.
It’s basically just nom nomming the data, creating statistical grenades.
When an AI trains on a bad book, it incorporates the ideas and even the poor sense of style. It isn’t providing any perspective. It’s basically just nom nomming the data, creating statistical grenades. I’m certainly not claiming that training on Mein Kampf creates an AI Hitler, there are other ways that can happen. What I am saying is that the ideas and concepts contained in these books are kicking around in there somewhere, even if they are shoved way down in the statistical distribution. What this ultimately means is unclear.
I don’t mean to be disingenuous here. The definition of a “bad” book is highly subjective. This quickly devolves into a who decides scenario, which could lead to unintended consequences of its own. My point is that there should be more purpose to the activity.
There were also plenty of idiotic takes on Project Panama. Never underestimate the true cluelessness of the e/acc community. One thing they effectively accelerate their own idiocy.
One of my favorite arguments from the e/acc community was that they weren’t destroying the books, they were preserving them. To which I joked that it was preservation through destruction. Preservation through destruction sounds like a quote that could be ripped from Orwell, just like the pages of his books for Project Panama. Turning books into statistics to monetize them doesn’t preserve them in any sense of the word. This is a silly argument that can be destroyed by one simple question. If they are preserved through this process, then where are they?
Preservation through destruction sounds like a quote that could be ripped from Orwell, just like the pages of his books for Project Panama.
Manipulation and Imitation
So, why are AI companies foaming at the mouth to get their hands on books that seem to have nothing to do with their goals? If I had to guess, it has to do with a couple of factors.
The more of this type of data ingested for training, the more the system may be able to imitate humans under a variety of conditions. This can be used by users of the system to create a “personality” from the tool, or, more importantly, to manipulate people, fooling them into thinking the AI is actually a human. This manipulation could be applied in situations like customer service. I experienced this recently.
A broken water pipe forced me to call some local plumbing companies after hours. Quite a few of them were using a call service with what sounded like a human in a call center, complete with office background noise. This was clearly done to manipulate users. Oddly enough, when asked if they were AI, only a couple responded that they were. This is the type of manipulation that I find unacceptable. Gary Marcus recently wrote an article about this as well.
Of course, these conditions can also be used to claim that the AI has a consciousness or a self that needs to be protected. This is pure SciFi bullshit meant to ramp up the hype.
Another interesting and related condition is pastiche. The more of this type of data the model is trained on, the better it may get at imitating specific forms of human style. People can use these to fool themselves into thinking they are being creative.
As an example, generative AI can reliably generate books. They aren’t good books, or well-informed books, or well-written books, or accurate books, or present new information, or new perspectives, or any of the other countless characteristics we associate with a good book. But words slathered onto pages… This it can do reliably.
Generative AI hasn’t cured cancer yet, but it excels at creating slop. Slop is literally the number one use case for generative AI today, arguably more than coding. There’s no doubt that AI companies want more of this behavior to keep people engaged.
But let’s get back to books.
Next-Gen Nerds
When I was growing up, being called a nerd was considered a bad thing, and nerds read a lot. Now, they are popular, wear black t-shirts and blue jeans, and claim that reading is for losers. Their perspective is warped by an “optimization-at-all-costs” mindset. But don’t take my word for it.
In November of 2022, notorious tech bro and crypto con man Sam Bankman-Fried told a writer interviewing him, “I would never read a book.” He went on to say, “I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”
That’s the next-gen nerd’s perspective. An entire book should be six paragraphs. But why stop there? Why not six bullet points? Seems I just out-optimized the optimizer! In fact, many of their points can be addressed by reductio ad absurdum.
This perspective does not serve people well and further devalues books. The theory is that if books can be reduced to numbers, then the ideas they contain can be made “useful” in a programmatic or more efficient way. But ideas from books can’t be reduced to numbers, just like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can’t be reduced to 42.
Oddly enough, when reducing books to numbers, you remove the content from context. Context, the very thing both humans and AIs need to make sense of things.
The idea that books are nothing but bloated friction is nonsense and could only be cooked up by delusional idiots. I acknowledge that poorly written books exist, and some books are 12 chapters when they should have been 6, but applying this perspective equally across all books is just plain stupid.
The Decline of Reading
Here’s a chart that should surprise no one.
Everyone knows you don’t become an influencer by reading. Or reflecting. Or thinking. You become an influencer by reacting. Thinking before you do something takes too much time. What should be concerning is the rate of the lines. Kids who don’t read turn into adults who can’t read. And we are seeing this play out.
Kids who don’t read turn into adults who can’t read.
Here’s another secret: no matter how good the AI gets, you’ll never become wise without doing the work yourself. Wisdom manifests from reading, writing, and a whole lot of reflection. All activities that are devalued today. I’ve previously covered how knowledge and understanding aren’t generated from bullet points, but let’s go a bit deeper.
In letter 27 of Seneca’s Letters on Ethics, he discusses how real joy depends on real study. In this letter, he describes a man named Calvisius Sabinus, a wealthy man who wanted to appear learned, who devised a shortcut. He spent a great deal of money on slaves, one to know Homer, another Hesiod, and nine more for each of the lyric poets.
After he assembled this group, he would pester his dinner guests by having these slaves at his feet and regularly ask them for verses to quote. Even with this assistance, it was observed that he’d often stop mid-sentence. When a man named Satellius Quadratus made fun of him, saying he should train his busboys to be literary scholars too, Sabinus responded that the slaves had cost him a hundred thousand sesterces apiece. To which Quadratus said, “You could have bought as many libraries for less.”
Sabinus’ optimization led to a mistaken assumption that the knowledge possessed by anyone in his household was his own. This perspective is not only wrong, but it also led to ridicule. Today, we have a similar situation with AI, and many would claim that the information contained in an AI tool is knowledge they themselves possess, except that it isn’t. This resembles a situation we had previously with Google search, so we shouldn’t be fooled merely by upgraded tech.
Excellence of mind cannot be borrowed or bought. -Seneca
Wisdom isn’t recall. After all, someone who memorizes things wouldn’t be considered wise. It’s the perspective that’s gained from study and reflection across a variety of sources. It’s the ability to connect the dots between concepts and form new ideas. Wisdom manifests in someone who puts in the work, which includes reading, writing, and a healthy dose of reflection, all things labeled by the tech bros as “friction.”
When Zeno of Citium (The founder of Stoic philosophy) visited the Oracle of Delphi with the question of what he should do to live his best life, the god replied, “He should have intercourse with the dead.” This is recorded in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. In modern times, people have changed this to “converse with the dead,” no doubt because of how intercourse is used today, but I think intercourse has a much deeper meaning. No pun intended.
The oracle’s response didn’t mean Zeno needed to engage a psychic medium or have a seance. The only true way to converse with the dead is to read. This is the meaning Zeno inferred as well.
I’m obsessed with the works of long-dead authors such as Seneca, Aldous Huxley, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Montaigne, and many others. I can’t send them letters or call them on the phone. I can grasp their perspective through their writing, through books, letters, and other artifacts they’ve left behind. I can highlight passages, write my own notes, create my own modern perspective, and even challenge these authors in my own way, given the time that has passed from them to me.
Reading is a superpower that we seem eager to relinquish, which is a shame, because in many cases, reading is the remedy for so much of what ails us today. Reading does broaden the mind. It demonstrates that even ancient people encountered many of the same problems we have today. It creates room for reflection that extends far beyond the act of reading. The quest for wisdom and conversing with the dead create a satisfaction that can’t really be matched by other activities. It’s a feeling that isn’t possible to explain, and it’s something that needs to be experienced.
Getting Useful Information From Books
There’s a time-tested way to get the information from books that doesn’t require destroying them and turning them into a statistical distribution: you can actually read them. Dated concept, I know. I have a large piece in draft on literacy more broadly, so we’ll keep this piece focused on reading.
People might claim that the joke is on me because I only have knowledge from the books I’ve read, whereas someone with generative AI has knowledge from all of the books, despite never reading any of them. This is an idiotic statement to make. Setting aside the issues with retrieval, hallucinations, and other technical issues, the user doesn’t actually doesn’t have the knowledge of any of these books. At best, they have pieces torn from context. These people are like Sabinus, without knowledge but happy to annoy dinner guests.
The great thing about books is that you don’t need to read them all. Just like an explorer doesn’t have to explore every square inch of the globe, a reader is free to explore their unique interests and forge their own path of knowledge and wisdom.
Another response could be, since the AI has been trained on the content of someone like Seneca, you could have a Seneca bot and ask it questions. But this approach doesn’t make sense either. First of all, even if this were an effective approach, you’d have to know the right questions to ask. Since you haven’t read the source material and aren’t confronted with concepts in the writing, the “right” questions would escape them.
Second, none of the responses from the bot would stick with you, or in some cases, make any sense. The responses won’t form a connection in the way the content is encountered in the context of reading a book. The bot is going to “tell” you something, while reading will “show” you something. Reading is a true experience. Being told something is ephemeral and throwaway. Experiencing something can last a lifetime, while being told something may last only seconds.
Experiencing something can last a lifetime, while being told something may last only seconds.
Finally, the bot will approximate a pastiche response based on what it may have encountered during its training. It’s going to fill in the blanks in whatever statistical way makes sense. It won’t be the true response based on what the author really knew or felt. However, this response does actually fool people, and we’ve seen it time and time again in the generative AI era.
Much of this makes so much more sense when stated out loud. What do you think is the best way to get value from George Orwell? Do you think throwing 1984 into a massive statistical distribution or reading the book? Reading a book sticks with you in a way other methods can’t match.
There’s a mismatch in the application of technical thinking here. The goal of reading a book is to change the landscape of your mind, not have immediate recall over chapter and verse. Thinking that the point of reading a book is to remember everything is a warped perspective caused by our modern technological environment.
Unable To Read
Many people find it difficult to read long-form content, things like books and longer essays, articles, maybe even this very one. This may be due to attention hijacking, inability to focus, or discomfort, for lack of a better term.
People often tell me they wish they had time to read. I tell them, “Yeah, like I have boatloads of free time.” When viewed this way, zoomed out, it appears that nobody has time to read. However, this isn’t the case.
It’s true that getting information from books requires purposeful action and commitment. However, once started, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. In many ways, it’s like an exercise routine. The best way to get started, or to get back into reading, is to create a habit. Start with the intention and don’t beat yourself up about it when you miss the mark.
What do you typically do before you go to bed? For many, this is swiping through social media, reading news stories, or maybe watching TV. This is a prime block of time to target for a reading habit.
You don’t need to start big. Maybe try 15 or 30 minutes of uninterrupted time. You may get distracted or feel uncomfortable. It’s fine. Like any habit, it will take some adjustment. At some point, it will click.
Don’t let some sort of idealized conception of reading throw you off. There’s so much reading advice out there, and much of it is bullshit. For example, nothing is more bullshit than speed reading. If you were worried about wasting your time reading, then speed reading will confirm your worries.
All of the things you are told are bad habits, such as vocalizing as you read, re-reading sections, and reading slowly, are all positives that reinforce the concepts contained in the book. Your goal is to develop an understanding of the material, form new connections between concepts in the book and in the world, and even develop new ideas based on these. None of that happens during speed reading.
It’s true, people read at different paces. You may feel like you read slower than other people, but that’s probably not true. Besides, who cares? You are reading for you.
As you begin reading again, you’ll find what works for you and what doesn’t. For example, maybe you prefer physical copies of books or the convenience of an eBook reader. The format is irrelevant if it works for you. Also, maybe you need to put your devices in do-not-disturb mode or make other purposeful interventions. Be intentional, find what works, and push forward.
My Approach To Reading
Let me share my approach, because I feel it’s pretty simple. I’ve explored using book tabs and other reference techniques, but I don’t use them consistently. Some people use reference cards, but I’ve never felt the need to go this far. I read for about an hour and a half every night before I go to bed. I typically have at least one fiction and one non-fiction book I’m reading at a time.
I prefer physical copies of books because they feel more engaging to me, and I don’t have yet another “device” in my hands. However, for nonfiction books I’m really trying to dig into, I’ll buy all three formats: physical, ebook, and audiobook. The audiobook is mostly for use while running on a treadmill or driving on a road trip.
For the physical copy of the book, I have three things: a Zebra Mildliner in lemon yellow, a pen, and a notebook. As I encounter interesting content, it could be concepts, things I’d like to quote, or anything else, I highlight it. If there is an entire section of a page, then I’ll highlight the first sentence and make a note with my pen in the margin, so when I revisit it, I have the context.
As I have ideas or make connections, I’ll stop reading and capture my thoughts in the notebook. I may include a piece of the book’s content there, but not always. I will always annotate the page number for reference, though. This way, it’s easier to revisit in the future.
After I’m done reading, I’ll take all the highlights from the physical book and apply them to the same sections in the eBook. I then sync those highlights to Readwise for both ease of reference and spaced repetition. I also have a physical commonplace book where I write the highlighted items. However, I’m not very consistent with this activity.
You may question the efficiency of my approach, as it seems I’ve added unnecessary extra work for myself. It appears that using the ebook and syncing the highlights is far more efficient. Once again, the optimization is a trap. The friction is the point.
In the act of transferring the highlights to the ebook, I’m once again confronted with all of the concepts I’ve highlighted, this time, after reading the whole book. Although I don’t remember things word-for-word, when I see the highlight, I’m reminded of the context in which the highlight was created. New ideas form, and I note those in my notebook. This activity further reinforces the content in my mind. I will sometimes reread the page or section during this activity. This activity provides much value.
Someone may argue that an AI can digest the entire book and provide relevant highlights without having to read it. Hopefully, by now you can recognize the issue. Even if it did this accurately, you’d be confronted with highlights out of context. The meaning and important features would be unavailable to you mentally.
Conclusion
The current AI age is making us wisdom-poor and manipulation-rich. The damaging consequences of the devaluation of reading are on the horizon for an entire generation and generations to come. It’s separating us from the very skills we need to defend ourselves and keep us robust in the modern environment. It’s removing our ability to reflect as modern technology pushes us to react.
Many believe they can’t read long-form content anymore, but that’s only because they haven’t tried. By creating a habit and some purposeful interventions, we can get back on track to finding wisdom.
The entire modern world seems to be doing everything it can to rob us of our humanity. Everywhere we turn, every reaction we have is either mediated or a byproduct of our current technological environment. Pretty much every piece of content we encounter online is a form of manipulation. This tiresome cacophony of content overwhelms our senses and wears us down. But we have a superpower, it’s called literacy. Literacy creates robust humans and is our greatest weapon to defend our humanity. It creates space for us to reflect and withhold our reactions. However, maybe not for long, as the kryptonite of content, entertainment, and instant reactions destroys this superpower, turning us into mindless, predictable automatons.
I do make time for this “friction” every day. This isn’t said to sound elitist, after all, I still watch TV shows and movies too. I wouldn’t even say I’m a particularly good reader, but I make do. And making do with reading is the whole point. Reading isn’t like baseball, where trying hard isn’t enough to be a starter. Reading makes you better, and trying hard pays off no matter how good you are.
As a matter of fact, if you want to maintain your humanity in a world that’s doing everything to steal it from you, then literacy is your greatest weapon.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. -Neil Postman
The Reading List For Robust Humans
It’s really hard to find books these days that provide a critical lens of technology or AI without also being filled with politics, biases, and other assorted bullshit. I feel that the world really does need a better class of critic.
I’ve read some highly recommended, well-reviewed AI books that were absolutely terrible. Mostly filled with junk food for biases. The few good points that were made were mercilessly beaten like a dead horse, revived, and then beaten again, which I can only assume happened for the sake of page count or the author’s own personal indulgences.
This post is my attempt to save you some time. There are many great books that didn’t make the list because it would have made it too long. So what I tried to do with this list is provide some objective books that examine the impact technology has on us humans, with a focus on impact, experience, background, and data. Although some of these books may cover similar ground, they are all worthy reads.
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology – (1992) – Neil Postman
You may wonder how a technology book from 1992 can be relevant today. That’s because Neil Postman was a true oracle. He was the Marshall McLuhan of the 80’s and 90’s. He could cut through the noise and see the reality of things. Every single chapter is filled with insight, and the dated examples could be easily swapped out for today’s. Mostly, it’s a book that demonstrates people of the past saw the problems of our current time, long before they surfaced. It’s an amazing book, which is why it’s the first on my list.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business – (1985) – Neil Postman
Okay, I couldn’t help myself. Here is a bonus Neil Postman book. Quite often, this book is the first port of call for Neil Postman. Despite the references to television, it’s an easy swap out for other technology. There’s so much interesting history here, such as the history of advertising, with some examples from the early days when our culture was more literate. Fascinating read.
I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge? -Neil Postman
Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart – (2025) – Nicolas Carr
Pretty much any of Nicolas Carr’s books are good, but this is his most recent book. I’d kind of describe it as a modernized, more approachable work on the impacts of communication technology than Marshall McLuhan. Although McLuhan’s work is referenced multiple times, Carr offers his own modern perspective on today’s technology and its impact on us.
More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade To Control The Fate of Humanity – (2025) – Adam Becker
If some of these other books are about the what, then Adam Becker’s book is about the why. It demonstrates just how kooky some tech leaders’ beliefs are. Such as the need to go to Mars to survive, despite its toxic soil. Or some of Kurzweil’s greatest hits, such as we should pave over the universe to convert atoms into computronium. I’ve covered some of this myself and highlighted Kurzweil’s nonsense, but this is a whole book dedicated to exposing the odd beliefs of the people who create the technology we use every day. He’s an astrophysicist, so the odd space beliefs are something he’s uniquely capable of addressing.
I will say, Becker gets a little preachy near the end of the book, but the work is solid. It’s a summary and origin story of the worst ideas to emerge from techno utopians.
Dark Data: Why What You Don’t Know Matters – (2020) – David J. Hand
I’ve been recommending this book to people since it was published in 2020. This isn’t a book about AI or technology’s impact on humanity, but about our inability to properly make sense of data. In this book, Hand identifies multiple categories of dark data that confound our ability to make sense of data. You’ll never look at a survey the same way again.
The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World – (2024) – Christine Rosen
This book covers our preference for mediated experiences and what this means when we lose them. She covers experiences that are on the verge of extinction and makes us think about exactly what we are giving up.
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man – (1964) – Marshall McLuhan
I struggled to add this book to the list because both Postman and Carr refer to and build on McLuhan’s work. I even referred to McLuhan multiple times in this very post. It’s for this reason, and because McLuhan is a true visionary, that I had to add this book to the list.
McLuhan was someone who could see the impact of technology on humans, despite no one else noticing. In this book, he covers the difference between hot and cold media, human impacts of augmentation, and the shrinking of the world due to electric technology. A world that has only further shrunk in the internet and social media age. Remember, the medium is the message.
It’s not a quick or easy read. Maybe it’s just me, but I found myself reading something, then going back to reread it. The references are a bit dated, as to be expected, but the content contained is as relevant today as it was back then.
Conclusion
This is just a start. Make 2026 the year you rekindle a reading habit. I set aside at least an hour a day before I go to bed. Once the habit forms, it’s easy to continue. Start with a few minutes a day if that’s all you have, and work from there. Welcome to the robust revolution!
This may seem like an odd book recommendation for 2023. After all, the book is 74 years old. Maybe you, like myself, read it when you were in school and felt that you’d gained all the insights from reading and classroom discussions. Do you remember any of those? I know I didn’t.
Revisiting a text like 1984 with the benefit of years and new context can lead to surprising insights. For example, did you notice the device called a Versificator? It’s a generative AI (of sorts) and its purpose was to crank out creative content, such as literature and music, without needing to expend creative thought. I’ll leave you to ponder the parallels with our modern boom in creative, generative AI (Dall-E, ChatGPT, etc.)
However, if you ask ChatGPT about its role in the story, it thinks it’s much bigger. Thanks to @CoryKennedy on Twitter for the image and the laughs.
What Made Me Revisit 1984 in 2022?
Believe it or not, it wasn’t misinformation, disinformation, or even surveillance discussions. It was something far less intelligent.
A while back, a person I was conversing with made some outlandish claims contrary to proven scientific facts. They insisted people shouldn’t be able to claim otherwise. Instead of directly challenging the person, I stated, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
The person gave me a puzzled look. Very proud of myself for remembering the quote, I smiled and said, “It’s from 1984.”
They responded, “I don’t care what year it’s from. That’s stupid.”
That exchange made me realize a few things. It’s been over 30 years since I’d read the book. I don’t remember the time when I’d read it. I was too young and cared too little. The quote I so proudly produced wasn’t from my reading but from others’ usage. I made a commitment to re-read it again in 2022.
Context
Put the reading in the context of the technological present. There’s a lot of referring to “the party” in the book, but just replace that with any other current group (tribes, in-groups, out-groups, conspiracists, etc.) The suspicion of other in-group members is like attacking your “near enemies.” For example, It’s easier for a group of conspiracy theorists to attack an in-group member who may agree that Bill Gates is microchipping people but not believe the earth is flat versus an out-group member who is rational and doesn’t care what conspiracy theorists think.
“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.”
George Orwell – 1984
Does that quote remind you of something? Concepts like the Two Minutes Hate and Atrocity Pamphlets make sense in the context of modern algorithmic social networks optimizing for increased engagement.
The big conversation of the book always seems to be the surveillance and disinformation aspects. These concepts are certainly relevant today, but not from any one place. Orwell didn’t envision surveillance capitalism on top of other surveillance activities. Also, everyone is more than happy to share their exact location at will, which would have been terrifying to Orwell, but for all of us, seems to be the norm.
There are many other relevant aspects from the book applicable to current times. Denial of Science and reality, contradictory actions such as Doublethink, controlling language, and even re-writing or reframing history to fit changing narratives.
Orwell was on to the fact that people act differently when they know they are being observed. The same is true on social networks. People are more likely to share misinformation that aligns with their biases when they know others will see it.
I enjoyed my rediscovery. It made me think about its applicability in our algorithmically driven, tribal, and divided times, even though it was written in 1949. It also made me think of other texts I may have overlooked, such as Jules Verne’s Paris in the Twentieth Century. I normally don’t pre-plan my reading, but I may need to add consider reading this in 2023.
With that, I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite quotes from the book.
A Few of my Favorite 1984 Quotes
“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.”
“In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.”
“The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.”
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
“The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police.”
“In Newspeak there is no word for “Science.” The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.”
“A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party.”
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”
“And if the facts say otherwise, then the facts must be altered. Thus history is continuously rewritten. This day-to-day falsification of the past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability of the regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love.”
“Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
