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Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us
A reflection on the reading life. What formed it, what threatens it, and what remains.
Reading Wars
Read online or download for free Reading Wars explores heated, even murderous, political struggles over who gets to read and what they get to read. Those conflicts, once again in the news, stretch back centuries. In this book, Don Herzog examines the history and politics of anxieties about readers and reading, spanning both the United States and Britain, from the 1500s right up to contemporary battles over banning library books and freedom of speech. In these pages, Herzog deftly interweaves episodes from Reformation England, when first Catholics and then Protestants cracked down on unsupervised Bible-reading, with the deadly campaigns in pre-Civil War America to keep black people – both free and enslaved – illiterate. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, he reconstructs arguments insisting that ordinary men and women could not be trusted to read what they liked – indeed, that some of them ought not read at all. And he charts struggles to promote literacy. Herzog argues that at stake in these battles is whether some people – those banned from reading – are perceived as not fully human, or lesser persons than others. The radical campaign to let more or less everyone read more or less everything is ultimately, therefore, a campaign for equality. Click here to read praise for Reading Wars "In characteristically engaging and straight-forward language Don Herzog explores the debates past and present, largely in Britain and America, about whether or not to suppress reading. By taking seriously the arguments for suppressing or restricting books and their readers, Herzog suggests that those arguments turn on the claim that for some people reading is dangerous. This assumption, Herzog compellingly argues, ignores the fact that literacy is largely a social activity. In Reading Wars, Herzog develops a powerful liberal argument for literacy and reading. An argument, Herzog shows, that has incompletely triumphed." — Steve Pincus, Thomas Donnelly Professor of History, University of Chicago "Knowledge is power - which is why efforts to acquire knowledge through reading have been outlawed, suppressed through violence, and remain targets today. Don Herzog's Reading Wars tells the astonishing history behind the wars on reading in a readable, clever style, underscoring the stakes of many of the current fights over censorship and book bans." — Leah Litman, cohost of the podcast Strict Scrutiny and New York Times bestselling author of Lawless "A rich yet accessible introduction to the many ways in which society has attempted to restrict reading materials throughout British and United States history. Equal parts illuminating and horrifying, it lays the groundwork for the 21st century’s own shameful dabbles with censorship through its careful consideration of the key concerns and prejudices that structure each generation’s literacy battles." — Alison Hicks, Associate Professor in Library and Information Studies, UCL "Political theory, historical sense, worrisome texts, unheralded documents, and great storytelling join forces in Herzog’s virtuoso investigation of the brutal fighting over who gets to learn to read (and what) in early and late modern America and Britain. The bloodshed may have lessened, but we are still fighting, and Herzog shows the deeper stakes involved in reading’s relation to equality and personhood." — Mary G Dietz, John Evans Professor Emerita of Political Theory, Northwestern University , Reading Wars explores heated, even murderous, political struggles over who gets to read and what they get to read. Don Herzog examines the history and politics of anxieties about readers and reading, spanning the United States and Britain, from the 1500s right up to contemporary battles over banning library books and freedom of speech.
Letting things build
This week I put together a reading list for my digital aura series. I recall starting to write around Thanksgiving — but when I looked back at my reading, I’d started reading for it months earlier. (No wonder it’s felt like such a big endeavor!)
Readeck: Home
Save interesting articles, long read, pictures, videos. Read or revisit them later.
Creative Reading: Scaffolding Reading for Transformation
Reading augmentation systems increasingly help readers process text at scale. While these tools address real constraints of time and cognitive load, they often implicitly frame reading as information transmission, or "reading to discard," delegating interpretation and effort to the machine. Yet this delegation changes the outcome of reading. For example, in scholarly reading, deciding what a research text implies and why it matters is central to the work of scholarly production. We propose creative reading as an alternative goal: reading augmentation that supports readers in creating both readings and themselves as readers. By putting literary and narrative theories into conversation with scholarly sensemaking and creativity support, we present a provocation-oriented design space for valuing the process of reading as a way of preserving a plurality of readings and transforming readers over time.
Creative Reading: Scaffolding Reading for Transformation
Reading augmentation systems increasingly help readers process text at scale. While these tools address real constraints of time and cognitive load, they often implicitly frame reading as information transmission, or "reading to discard," delegating interpretation and effort to the machine. Yet this delegation changes the outcome of reading. For example, in scholarly reading, deciding what a research text implies and why it matters is central to the work of scholarly production. We propose creative reading as an alternative goal: reading augmentation that supports readers in creating both readings and themselves as readers. By putting literary and narrative theories into conversation with scholarly sensemaking and creativity support, we present a provocation-oriented design space for valuing the process of reading as a way of preserving a plurality of readings and transforming readers over time.
Current - A River of Reading
Current rethinks RSS for the modern reader. Your feeds flow like a river. No inbox anxiety, no unread counts.
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How to create reading experiences that "go beyond information transmission and toward reader transformation.” Great paper by @blue-phia.bsky.social @lepidopterane.bsky.social @yijunliu.bsky.social Sarah Sterman @sh1m.bsky.social @maxkreminski.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2606.04308 >
Finally had some time (to attempt) to catch up on reading the articles published on Offprint. Wanted to share a few that were fun reads First article is by @bunniesin.space. They’re exploring the world of atproto and reading their thoughts and confusion on @mu.social’s lex extension was a good read
Some thoughts on extending lexicons
amybunny.offprint.app2025 Reading List
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker
Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Malone Scott
Radical Respect: How to Work Together Better by Kim Scott
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security by Scott Galloway
