How do you actually process all the text you encounter daily?
I've realized I don't like reading text linearly.
Someone writes a text, and it's encoded by their writing style, knowledge, thinking patterns, and so on. Then I need to read it through, decode it, and understand if it was worth the effort.
AI slop summaries don't work for me either. But I'd like a tool that lets me "read on my terms" - explore text in stages that I prefer, as shallow (topic/description/keywords) or as deep as I want. Like a progressive JPEG, zooming into details based on my interest level.
For example, with typical inbound emails, I'd want them reshaped into a "decoded" form that I've set up - easier for me to read without adapting to each sender's writing style.
Right now, I usually bookmark to read later and don't read (probably like most of us). But even as a text author, I'd much rather people engage with specific topics, descriptions, or keywords - exploring the bits of information they're most interested in - than simply bookmark my text and never read it.
Do you have a workflow for reading/working with text? Do AI summaries work for you?
It seems like AI could make the reading process more interactive instead of purely linear - essentially becoming the decoding step (or steps) between the author's encoding and our understanding.
How do you all handle information consumption these days?
Replies
This resonates hard, I’ve unironically always wished reading felt more modular and nonlinear, like zooming into ideas when I care. I'm almost picturing some kind of visual interface where I can modularly zoom into concepts, like a JPEG like you said.
Totally agree AI could be a personal decoder instead of just summarizing but I haven't found a tool that could do just that, would be very cool though.
Hey Vlad, for summaries (from particular websites, I use TidyRead) and sometimes ChatGPT with the prompt: "Summarise this briefly and give me the main message covered in the text." If the information is crucial to me or my work, I am open to reading the whole article.