Books as Technologies Reshaping Thought and Culture

The Art of Manliness · December 16, 2025 · Listen to Original Episode →

Original Title:

TL;DR

The book's physical format (codex) enables critical engagement, allowing readers to mark, reference, and synthesize ideas across texts, a capability largely absent in scroll formats.
The transition from reading aloud to silent reading, facilitated by innovations like word spacing and punctuation, fostered individual interpretation and private contemplation of texts.
The printing press's explosion of information, increasing book production by over 1800% in its first 150 years, directly enabled the Reformation by allowing widespread dissemination of new ideas.
Novels, emerging with mass literacy and industrialized printing in the 18th and 19th centuries, cultivate emotional and social intelligence by allowing readers to actively engage with characters' experiences.
The act of writing and editing, exemplified by ancient figures like Virgil and Quintilian, serves as a prop for thought, externalizing the cognitive process and refining ideas.
Books function as "idea machines" by making abstract concepts tangible and manipulable, facilitating dissection, critical analysis, and the synthesis of new thoughts.
The book's static nature, preserving ideas across time, allows for reinterpretation and the imposition of new criteria, enabling interaction with historical thought.

Deep Dive

Books are not mere containers of information but revolutionary technologies that have fundamentally reshaped human thought and culture by introducing a distinct "hardware" layer alongside their "software" content. This physical design and our interaction with it have enabled critical engagement, knowledge synthesis, and the very evolution of how we process and transmit ideas across time.

The transition from scrolls to the codex, the bound book format, introduced random access, allowing for precise referencing and comparison of ideas, as exemplified by Augustine's ability to revisit specific passages. This format facilitates a deeper, more critical engagement with texts, enabling the extraction, manipulation, and juxtaposition of concepts that are crucial for developing new thoughts. The codex's inherent structure, with its discrete pages and ability to mark specific locations, transforms abstract ideas into tangible objects that can be analyzed and synthesized. This process of externalizing thought through writing and editing, evident from Plato's meticulous revisions to Virgil's dictation and editing process, serves as a prop for thinking, making the written page an extension of the mind itself.

The evolution of the book's hardware--from early notebooks to the modern codex--enabled significant societal shifts. The adoption of the codex by early Christians, who used it to compile scripture and other texts, facilitated the dissemination of their beliefs and contributed to its widespread adoption. The subsequent development of the printing press, and later industrialized printing, democratized access to information on an unprecedented scale. This proliferation of texts, particularly Bibles, fueled the Reformation by enabling individuals to engage directly with scripture and form personal interpretations, thereby challenging established religious authority. Furthermore, the development of mass literacy and affordable printing in the 18th and 19th centuries paved the way for the novel, a new form of "software" that fosters emotional intelligence and empathy by immersing readers in characters' experiences and perspectives. This capacity for vicarious experience through fiction enhances our ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others, a crucial component of social intelligence.

Despite the rise of digital technologies like large language models, books retain a unique value. While LLMs offer powerful tools for extracting information and drafting content, they cannot replicate the deep soul and mind formation that occurs through the sustained, contemplative engagement with a book. Books provide serendipitous discoveries and foster a robust level of critical thinking and personal growth that LLMs, when used solely for information retrieval, do not. The ability to navigate complex narratives, engage with nuanced arguments, and develop personal interpretations remains a distinct advantage of the book format, particularly in an age increasingly dominated by fragmented information consumption.

Action Items

Create a personal reading framework: Dedicate 3-5 hours weekly to fiction, focusing on novels that explore complex character motivations and societal critiques.
Audit personal knowledge acquisition: For 2-3 core topics, compare information density and critical engagement potential between books and LLM-generated summaries.
Implement a "book-as-object" interaction method: For 1-2 books, actively use marginalia, highlighting, and note-taking to facilitate critical analysis and idea manipulation.
Design a comparative reading experiment: Select 1-2 classic texts and re-read them with a 5-10 year gap to analyze how personal experience alters interpretation and meaning.
Draft a "reading reflection" template: Define 3-4 structured prompts to capture insights on character development, narrative structure, and thematic evolution from 2-3 fiction books.

Key Quotes

"But in reality books are both software and hardware and the reality is that the physical format of the book the way that you interact with the book has a very important impact on what we get out of it what it enables us to do and how it's used and you can kind of trace that all the way back to the very earliest days of books all the way until the present and we're going to do a history of the development of the book as you know the format the hardware that we have now today because it's a really interesting history."

Joel Miller argues that the physical form of a book, its "hardware," is as crucial as its content, the "software." This physical design significantly influences how we engage with information, what it enables us to achieve, and how it is utilized. Miller emphasizes that understanding this hardware aspect is key to appreciating the book's true power.

"Well i start the book with the story of augustine in the garden there's this classic story out of the confessions where augustine is distraught and he walks off to a garden he's got a copy of saint paul's letters with him and his friend alypius is also with him and he doesn't want alypius to see that he's crying he's just kind of like completely wrecked and he wanders off to another corner of this garden he sits down under a fig tree and he just begins to weep and while he is in that state he hears over the wall of an adjoining villa the phrase tolle lege latin for take up and read and he remembers his copy of his book so he runs back to the bench where he'd dropped it off and picks it up and he opens the page at random opens the book at random and he lands on a page lands on a passage that completely upends his life it salvos his troubled spirit it solves the kind of quandary that he's in and there's a very interesting detail in that passage of the confessions where he says after that i put my finger or some other marker in the place to like hold what he found and that's like a completely throw off line that you wouldn't necessarily think about until you recognize that the book is also hardware as well as software because what that enabled him to do was then go back to that line it enabled him to share it with alypius his friend and you can imagine just the benefit of being able to do that not just with one book which of course he did at that moment but with an entire library to be able to mark the finding within a book enables you to do it across the book multiple uh multiple citations within a book it enables in other words a kind of critical engagement with that text that would otherwise be a bit unavailable to you."

Joel Miller uses the story of Augustine to illustrate how the physical book's "hardware" facilitates critical engagement with text. The ability to mark a specific passage, as Augustine did, allows for easy retrieval, sharing, and comparison with other texts, enabling a deeper level of analysis and synthesis that would be difficult with other formats.

"Well one of the things that i emphasize in the idea machine which is kind of my metaphor for what a book is and then of course the adjacent things around it like libraries are also part of the idea machine but one of the things that an idea machine allows you to do is think new thoughts and the way that you have the ability to do that one of the ways is the book makes ideas like objects you can see them and you can manipulate them you can play with them you can move them around you can analyze them such that you can see the components of an argument you know like when you are reading a book for instance and you can write in the margin point one point two point three it enables you to go back to that page and quickly reassess the argument or quickly go back and see how it holds together and if something is made objective like that it's much easier to dissect it to be critical with it whereas if you're listening to an orator or a speech or whatever you can't really do that it's very difficult to go back and like analyze how was that how did he make that argument was that a like a specious argument was it totally bogus the answer is probably yes and you have no way of actually going back and doing anything other than using your memory to get the gist of what he said whereas with a book you have quotable objective data that you can look back at."

Joel Miller explains that books function as "idea machines" by making abstract concepts tangible. The book's format allows ideas to be treated as observable objects that can be manipulated, analyzed, and critically examined, unlike ephemeral spoken words. This objectification, facilitated by features like margin notes, enables readers to dissect arguments and engage with content more deeply.

"The number of new books started posing a problem for people it was organizing and finding information like they were having a problem with information overload you know thousands of years way back way back when today we think of this is really interesting i thought this was really interesting today we think of organizing books the way you do is you put it on a shelf with the spine facing out so you can read the title and then you can organize those based on subject or however else you want to organize them but that's not how people kept their books during the renaissance how did people store their books and how did that make finding information a big chore."

Joel Miller highlights that the proliferation of books, particularly after the invention of the printing press, led to information overload. He points out that the modern method of organizing books with spines facing outward on shelves, which seems obvious today, was not the practice during the Renaissance, making information retrieval a significant challenge.

"The way to think about it is this when you pick up a book and you're reading about a character whether that's in a first person narrative or it's a third person narrative we impose our own cognitive faculties on this character we like loan our own emotions to the character we loan our goal setting ability to the character we loan our problem solving ability to the character in ways that other kinds of literature don't allow us to do or don't invite us to do so when a character is stuck like we are busy problem solving with them we're like well you should really do x you should really do y and then that happens and then we feel either grief or joy at how it happened or whatever and that emotive connection is also powerful by itself because it is formative it is the kind of thing that actually shapes our own emotional intelligence and so as reading fiction we are learning about the world in a way and other people more importantly in a way that we couldn't outside of books that were so directly related to that kind of experience."

Joel Miller posits that reading fiction actively engages readers by allowing them to project their own cognitive and emotional faculties onto characters. This process of "loaning" emotions, problem-solving skills, and goal-setting abilities fosters a deep connection that shapes emotional intelligence and provides a unique way of understanding the world and other people.

"I end the book with sam bankman fried the disgraced founder of that massive cryptocurrency exchange he very prominently said near his downfall in fact very closely to that that if you wrote

Resources

External Resources

Books

"The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future" by Joel Miller - Mentioned as the primary subject of the podcast episode, arguing that books are revolutionary technologies for shaping culture and thought.
"Confessions" by Augustine - Mentioned for the story of Augustine reading a passage that changed his life, illustrating the benefit of marking and returning to specific text.
"Georgics" by Virgil - Mentioned as an example of a work that Virgil dictated in the morning and edited in the afternoon, demonstrating the use of writing as a prop for thinking.
"Aeneid" by Virgil - Mentioned as an example of a work that Virgil dictated in the morning and edited in the afternoon, demonstrating the use of writing as a prop for thinking.
"No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy - Recommended as a starting novel for men who do not regularly read fiction.
"Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut - Recommended as a starting novel for men who do not regularly read fiction, described as funny, satirical, and wise.
"The Aviator" by Eugene Vodolazkin - Recommended as a starting novel for men who do not regularly read fiction, described as a beautiful book about a man who wakes up in the modern era after being frozen during the Russian Revolution.
"Everything is Obvious Once You Know the Answer" by Duncan Watts - Mentioned in relation to the historical practice of storing books in chests rather than on shelves.
"The Republic" by Plato - Mentioned for Plato's critique of poetry and its potential to corrupt the mind.
"Phaedrus" by Plato - Mentioned for Plato's use of Socrates to present a case against writing.
"Phaedo" by Plato - Mentioned as a dialogue where Socrates's interaction with books violates his own objections to writing.
"Memorabilia" by Xenophon - Mentioned as a work by a disciple of Socrates that shows Socrates interacting with books.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe - Mentioned as a powerful novel that affected people and contributed to the Civil War, highlighting the impact of fiction.
"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas - Mentioned as an example of a historical novel where an LLM was used to flesh out historical context for better understanding.

Articles & Papers

"Dying Breed Article: Why I Hate Making (and Watching) Online Videos" (Dying Breed) - Mentioned as an article available on the Dying Breed Substack.
"AoM Article: Why Men Should Read More Fiction" (Art of Manliness) - Mentioned as an article on the Art of Manliness website.
"AoM Article: Fiction for Men as Suggested by Art of Manliness Readers" (Art of Manliness) - Mentioned as an article on the Art of Manliness website.

People

Joel Miller - Guest and author of "The Idea Machine," former publishing executive, editor, and book reviewer.
Augustine - Ancient philosopher whose story in "Confessions" illustrates the benefit of marking text.
Alypius - Friend of Augustine mentioned in "Confessions."
Socrates - Ancient philosopher whose views on writing are discussed, though he is also noted for interacting with books.
Plato - Philosopher who wrote dialogues featuring Socrates and is noted for his own writing.
Thoth - Greek god who presented writing to the Egyptian pharaoh.
King Famous - Egyptian pharaoh who questioned the benefits of writing.
Virgil - Roman poet whose writing process involved dictation and editing.
Suetonius - Biographer who wrote about Virgil's working methods.
Quintilian - Roman orator and author who discussed the writing and editing process.
Christopher Columbus - Mentioned as the father of Hernando Colon.
Hernando Colon - Son of Christopher Columbus, credited with early innovations in library organization and cataloging.
Miguel de Cervantes - Author of "Don Quixote," considered the first modern novel.
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," mentioned in relation to its impact.
Abraham Lincoln - U.S. President who commented on the impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Eugene Vodolazkin - Russian novelist, author of "The Aviator."
Lisa Hayden - Translator of "The Aviator."
Sam Bankman-Fried - Disgraced founder of a cryptocurrency exchange, quoted as dismissing the value of books.

Organizations & Institutions

Art of Manliness (AoM) - Podcast and website hosting the discussion, with archives and a Substack.
Dying Breed - Substack newsletter co-written by Kate and the podcast host, publishing articles on various topics.
Miller's Book Review - Website run by Joel Miller for posting book reviews and literary essays.
NFL (National Football League) - Mentioned in relation to an article about professional sports and life seeming boring.
Pro Football Focus (PFF) - Mentioned as a data source for player grading.
Caldera Lab - Company offering men's skincare products, mentioned as a sponsor.
Shopify - E-commerce platform mentioned as a sponsor for starting businesses.
Toyota Trucks - Mentioned in sponsor segments.

Websites & Online Resources

artofmanliness.com/tag/books/ (Art of Manliness) - AoM book-related archives.
millersbookreview.com - Joel Miller's website for book reviews and literary essays.
artofmanliness.com - The Art of Manliness website.
dyingbreed.net - Website for the Dying Breed Substack.
art19.com/privacy - Privacy policy link.
art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info - California privacy notice link.
calderalab.com/manliness - Website for Caldera Lab skincare, with a promo code.
shopify.com/manliness - Shopify website for starting a business, with a trial offer.
amzn.to/4qakyoZ - Amazon link for "The Idea Machine."
dyingbreed.net/p/why-i-hate-making-and-watching-online - Link to a specific article on Dying Breed.
artofmanliness.com/living/reading/why-men-should-read-more-fiction/ - Link to an AoM article.
artofmanliness.com/living/reading/fiction-for-men-as-suggested-by-art-of-manliness-readers/ - Link to an AoM article.
artofmanliness.com/living/reading/podcast-1057-the-power-of-the-notebook-the-history-and-practice-of-thinking-on-paper/ - Link to an AoM podcast episode.
millersbookreview.com - Joel Miller's website.

Podcasts & Audio

The Art of Manliness - Podcast featuring the discussion with Joel Miller.
AoM Podcast #1,057: The Power of the Notebook -- The History and Practice of Thinking on Paper - Mentioned as a related podcast episode.

Other Resources

Codex - The book format with pages bound within covers, contrasted with scrolls.
Scrolls - Ancient format for written texts, described as cumbersome compared to codices.
Scripta continua - Ancient method of writing without spaces between words.
Testimonia - Extracts from Jewish scriptures used by early Christians.
Membranis - Parchment notebook, mentioned in relation to Paul's letters.
Recitatio - Public presentations where books were read aloud in ancient times.
Printing Press - Technology that revolutionized book production and proliferation.
Industrial Printing - 19th-century advancements in printing technology, including rotary presses.
LLMs (Large Language Models) - AI technologies like ChatGPT, discussed in relation to their role alongside books.
Perplexity - A research tool mentioned for its helpfulness with links and research functions.
Notebook LLM - A Google LLM used for querying books.
ChatGPT - An LLM used for querying books and drafting content.
Claude - An LLM mentioned for its use in querying books.
Grok - An LLM mentioned for its use in querying books.
Theory of Mind - A cognitive ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others, enhanced by reading fiction.
Humanities Degree - Mentioned in relation to Sam Bankman-Fried's dismissal of books.
Substack - A platform for newsletters, mentioned as a place where people celebrate classical literature.
Booktok - A trend on TikTok where people discuss books.