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by dazmax
3562 days ago
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Reading the newspaper and magazines was basically the equivalent before the internet, I think. With the paper you'd eventually run out of stuff to read in a day, but if you had enough magazine subscriptions, you could find something marginally interesting. I think one difference other than the never-ending aspect of the internet is that when you're reading a newspaper or book you get sleepy when you're supposed to, whereas if you're looking at a screen the blue light keeps you awake longer and all your chores take longer the next day because you have less energy. |
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Weekend newspapers would kill you if dropped on your head from a modest height. Magazines had hundreds of ad pages.
Non-ad content used to be much longer. Many features and columns were equivalent to a long-read feature today.
This issue of Byte from 1981 (about Smalltalk) is a 312MB PDF with nearly 500 pages:
https://ia802700.us.archive.org/8/items/byte-magazine-1981-0...
I think the blue light issue may be overstated. I used to read paper into the early hours, even after I was tired and sleepy. I still get a "must sleep now" cut off, even when surrounded by screens. It just happens later.
What isn't overstated is information volume. Hacker News and Reddit literally give you more links/features in 24 hours than Byte used to offer once a month. Each item may be shorter - sometimes - but there are many, many more things to read.