I have always disliked the apps that provide you with a 15-minute summary of the books, usually non-fiction books. Such services are reviewed well and people seem to be paying for them. For example, Blinkist. Here’s whom this service claims to be built for.
Perfect for curious people who love to learn, busy people who don’t have time to read, and even people who aren’t into reading.
I don’t get this. What’s the fun in listening to a 15-minute summary of books? Even podcasts, they claim?
It’s okay to not be into reading books. One isn’t really missing anything if they don’t read books – the information will find its way to reach them. Why, then, the farce of reading books through summaries?
With the rise of ChatGPT and likes, services now don’t even want people to read articles on the web. For example, the latest update for Arc browser launched a new feature called 5-second preview where one can “press Shift and hover over any link to generate a summary of the webpage, without a single click”. This is not good as it can potentially kill people’s (already dwindling) interest in visiting other websites.
Why are we so against any form of reading in the original voice?