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BOOKS IN AN AGE OF TWEETSHere's an excerpt from a post by productivity and digital minimalism czar Cal Newport, beginning with a couple quotes from a professor's essay collection. -Editor ""They were not, with few exceptions, readers — never had been; that they had always occupied themselves with music, TV, and videos; they had difficulty slowing down enough to concentrate on prose of any density."" "For in fact, our entire collective subjective history — the soul of our societal body, is encoded in print. Is encoded, and has for countless generations been passed along by way of the word, mainly through books." ... it was the introduction of mass-produced longform writing that really unleashed human potential — ushering in the modes of critical, analytical understanding that birthed both the enlightenment and the scientific revolution, the foundations of modernity. It allowed us to efficiently capture complex thought in all its nuance, then build on it, layer after layer, nudging forward human intellectual endeavor. Writing was not just another technology, in other words, but the cognitive lodestone that attracted all advances that followed. As it turns out, the essay collection was written in 1994, a generation ago. Every new technology has its doomsayers believing it's the ruination of mankind, and they're not entirely wrong. For every gain, something is lost. But books haven't gone away. I had a conversation with my son where I asked him, "How long does it take to write a tweet?" - a few seconds. How long does it take to write a Facebook post? - a couple minutes. "A newspaper article?" - a day or two. "Magazine article?" A book?" Books are the fruit of years or even a lifetime's effort. For those willing to spare just hours, that accumulated wisdom and advice is yours to be had. The great numisamtic authors of the past are still here with us today in their books. Read them in print or on some device, but read them and lifetimes of knowledge will be yours. -Editor
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Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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