New That's Really Old
Lately I have realized that most of the books I find interesting were written before 2000.
To read lots of books is to recognize popular tends in writing. It's a perfect feedback loop, and helps you separate out new and old ideas. Some books only five years old appear to have been read by 10,000 people, riddled with with rips, stains and marginalia. Recently I checked out Brene Brown's "Daring Greatly", after listening to an interview on a podcast. She's hugely popular, perhaps too popular, as the book was in shreds. There's nuggets of wisdom in her writing, but mostly derivative of the psychology/self-help books of other decades, specifically in the New-Age movement of the late 1980s, when there was a spike in interest in this genre. Psychology books written in the 50s seem more interesting simply because you realize the evergreen nature of the topic.
I started reading "Essentialism", a pop productivity book, released 2015. Apparently lots of people want to read this as I can't renew it at the library. I checked out the fascinating Art & Physics 3 months ago and continue to renew it. Old information, but vastly more interesting. Same for old music.
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Post-script: I stumbled on this article from 2004 about RSS feeds. How interesting that one could use the internet as a "pull" technology. Social media presumes that we need to have things we looked at before automatically pushed to us. What was revolutionary was the idea that you could customize your own newspaper. Alas, Facebook changed all that. This is another example of a "cultural amnesia" that keeps repeating itself with each generation.
To read lots of books is to recognize popular tends in writing. It's a perfect feedback loop, and helps you separate out new and old ideas. Some books only five years old appear to have been read by 10,000 people, riddled with with rips, stains and marginalia. Recently I checked out Brene Brown's "Daring Greatly", after listening to an interview on a podcast. She's hugely popular, perhaps too popular, as the book was in shreds. There's nuggets of wisdom in her writing, but mostly derivative of the psychology/self-help books of other decades, specifically in the New-Age movement of the late 1980s, when there was a spike in interest in this genre. Psychology books written in the 50s seem more interesting simply because you realize the evergreen nature of the topic.
I started reading "Essentialism", a pop productivity book, released 2015. Apparently lots of people want to read this as I can't renew it at the library. I checked out the fascinating Art & Physics 3 months ago and continue to renew it. Old information, but vastly more interesting. Same for old music.
***
Post-script: I stumbled on this article from 2004 about RSS feeds. How interesting that one could use the internet as a "pull" technology. Social media presumes that we need to have things we looked at before automatically pushed to us. What was revolutionary was the idea that you could customize your own newspaper. Alas, Facebook changed all that. This is another example of a "cultural amnesia" that keeps repeating itself with each generation.
