Was reading just a brief, fleeting event in human history? Certain artificial intelligence researchers believe so, and for interesting reasons—and for the sake of our future, let's hope they are wrong.
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Humans haven't always known how to read and write. In a fascinating study published by Professor Stanislas Dehaene, a renowned neuroscientist, he argued that when we learn to read, we force the part of the brain responsible for recognizing patterns and faces to recognize text instead.
Since artificial intelligence is already capable of conversing with us in natural language via speech or video, new studies suggest that our brains may be reverting to the visual and verbal communication methods we are born with, and human reading ability will gradually atrophy.
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It is unlikely that our grandchildren won't know how to read and write, but at the core of this claim lies not only truth, but a reality that is already unfolding on the ground.
I once read a study online discussing how we have shifted to absorbing information by skimming, rather than reading texts word for word from beginning to end. While reading it, I noticed that I was skimming through the text myself, reading it by its headings—how symbolic.
The infinite scroll on social networks, along with the technological infrastructure that allows us to consume high-quality visual media around the clock for free, turns reading into a task that demands energy and attention, and the time we dedicate to reading is steadily decreasing.
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Personally, I believe that reading is still the best way to absorb information in an organized and comprehensive manner. The main reason is that with reading, we can control the pace at which we learn—we can easily reread the same paragraph or read more slowly. In no other form of learning do we control the pace so well.
A well-structured book can cover a topic thoroughly and deeply, and no course I have ever watched has matched the level of a good book.
Paradoxically, I believe I became a tech lead in a relatively short period mainly thanks to reading. I learned English through reading, and today it serves as my gateway to any other kind of new and useful information I need.
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And what do you see in the picture?
The lovely Claude Code built me a plugin for writing books. The plugin receives a topic from me, adapts it to my English level, structures the chapters, topics, and style to perfectly match what I like to read, and even adds diagrams and formatting. It prepares the final book for me as a print-ready file.
I used the first book to prepare for an information security exam, and it was perfect. The second, about the world of photography, was already nearly 600 pages long. I enjoyed this book so much that I sent it to be printed as a single copy, and its knowledge-filled glossy pages bring me genuine joy.
The next books are already on the way. They cover English grammar, physics, economics, and mathematics, and their covers will look even better.
If you want to try it too, here are two tips: create the book using Claude Code rather than the regular chat, invest time and patience in precise planning and refinement, and if you want to translate the book into Hebrew, do so using the API for Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro.
The book can also be printed as a single unit. I printed one copy through the BookPod website (there might be others, they aren't paying me for promotion...). It cost less than 70 NIS after upgrading to color printing and glossy paper, a highly reasonable price that turns this method into my new bookstore.
Artificial intelligence likely poses a real threat to the book world, and there is something satisfying about using it to custom-create the best books we could ever dream of for ourselves.
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👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss, and my posts are not written by artificial intelligence.
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