The Reason for Reading Books

The content I will post today is a story that often comes up in essay topics, and it’s also a story I really want to convey to students, why should we read?

Today’s topic is about how to develop the abilities needed by our students in today’s modern society. The most necessary ability when students go out into the world, namely “The reason for reading books!” is the story I will convey today.

In the past era of manufacturing, it was important to develop something new first and the technology to make it. But in today’s modern society, which is highly developed in each field, it is almost impossible to pioneer something new. So, what is the necessary ability to survive in the modern age? That ability is to redefine new concepts or show a different perspective that people these days find attractive.

A good example of such ability is the Shared Platform. Uber, which evolved from the existing taxi, Airbnb, which incorporated a different perspective from the hotel, and shared offices and shared kitchens that came out of sublets, which are currently having a bit of difficulty. Services that came out from a more progressive perspective from the original concept show that they have succeeded in modern society.

The metaverse and meta cognition, which redefined the original conceptual part and reflected the current trend, are also good examples. The virtual reality called metaverse has established the concept of metaverse by adding AI to Virtual Reality Meta Cognition is an expanded concept of ‘self-objectification’ that existed before. In other words, these processes of redefining concepts by reflecting the current trend on the original concept are necessary for students living in modern society.

On the other hand, let’s also look at an example that went through the same process but failed. That is MBS, Mortgage-Backed Securities. It is an example of expanding the concept of receiving a Mortgage loan when we buy a house, and commoditizing it by passing the bond to the bank and securitizing it during the debt process.

The grades of people who borrowed were divided by credit from Triple A to C, and the grade with the ability to repay well is Triple A, and the grade of those who can’t is C.

In case you can’t repay the loan, the concept of reducing the risk is to divide a $100 loan into $10 and divide it among 10 people to commoditize and sell it to investors. A strange phenomenon occurred where the grades of people who borrowed went up from the thought that the risk was reduced.

By repeatedly dividing the loan again and again and commoditizing it, the grades of people who borrowed kept going up, and eventually, when house prices plummeted, bankruptcies occurred, leading to the economic crisis of 2008. You can confirm that although it applied the same method of redefining the original concept, the result was very different.

The most excellent example of redefining the original concept or showing a different perspective in modern society is “Quantum Computer”.

The computer we used to use has a Circuit Chip inside the device, and inside it is a Transistor. If you think of a transistor as a semiconductor, it is marked as 1 and 0 as electrons flow in the semiconductor. The transistor makes symbols like 1 0 1 0 and the command is given by the combination of symbols and the computer operates. Ultimately, the more transistors you put in the Circuit Chip, the better the technology because it performs various operations well, so the key is to have many small transistors in the chip.

The size of this transistor is 14 nanometers, 10 to the minus 9th power. It’s a very small size that you can’t see, but one transistor is one-tenth the size of a 120-nanometer HIV virus. Do you understand how small it is? In other words, the transistor is not visible at all, which means that the technology is very advanced to this extent.

As the size of the transistor becomes very small, normal physical phenomena do not apply in the quantum world. Electrons have to come and go to distinguish whether it is 1 or 0, and give a command, but if the transistor becomes too small, a strange phenomenon occurs.

It’s the Tunnelling phenomenon where electrons teleport as they pass by. Ultimately, quantum mechanics is the study of atomic phenomena, and this is called Quantum Theory. If the transistor gets smaller, it is impossible to distinguish between 1 and 0, so strange commands can occur, so it is realistically impossible for the transistor to get smaller. So, the Quantum Computer came out.

Richard Feynman discovered that there are Electronic electrons around the atom and the electrons are spinning around the central atom in a wave form, and applied that principle to the Quantum Computer. In other words, the atom plays the role of a transistor, which is exactly what a quantum computer is.

As I explained earlier, Shared Platform, Meta-, Quantum Computer, etc. are things that have redefined the previous concept in a progressive way or sorted out concepts according to the trend of these days. In order to develop the ability of this process, it is important to ask “fundamental questions”. If you can look at the essence of something from a fundamental question, you can develop the ability to integrate or develop concepts.

So, are you saying to read a book? Yes!

You have to read a book to ask fundamental questions or get closer to the essence. Some people might say why read when you can see a thick book concisely in a YouTube video, but I can’t agree with that opinion. There is a high probability of failure if you make a business with an idea that suddenly comes to mind. Because each field is highly developed and many people have been thinking for a long time, sudden thoughts often fail in the process of implementation. Successful businesses may start with sudden thoughts, but the reason they were able to succeed is because they reviewed or thought for a long time. In other words, it means that you have thought about one thing for a long time to reach the essence. It’s hard to think for a long time in everyday life, but the compulsory way to do it is to read a book.

In the world-renowned bestseller, Professor Michael Sandel’s book What is Justice, the reader explains what justice is over hundreds of pages. You can see a video that is easily summarized in 10 minutes on YouTube, but the fact that you think about one topic for tens of hours while reading this thick book can only be obtained through reading. I think the probability of getting closer to the essence is high because I have been thinking about one topic for a long time!

Assuming that there is no traffic jam in Manhattan, “Touring with a sports car vs. walking tour” can be compared Sports car = Book Summary you can see in the video Walking = Reading a book page by page You can compare it. If you tour New York with a sports car, you will see big spots and think that’s how it looks. On the other hand, if you tour by walking, you will see the rebar of the George Washington Bridge, go inside the Statue of Liberty, and even have deep thoughts about the people inside Central Park, which is actually a different thought. This is exactly the method of getting closer to the essence in detail! Students living in modern society are living in an era where it is difficult to define new concepts. Therefore, it is necessary to go through the process of redefining new concepts by recombining various concepts or reflecting the current trend. To do that, you need to get closer to the essence, and there is nothing better than slowly reading a book for that. The only way to get closer to the essence - reading If someone asks why do you read a book? I think that getting closer to the essence of something, that is important, and being obsessed with thinking about one thing is the way to reach the essence. The reason you read a book is to get closer to the essence because you are forced to think about one concept while reading a book from the first page to the last. The reason for reading a book is to reach the essence!

Today, I talked about the reason for reading books to develop the necessary skills in modern society. Through this posting, I hope you will have a reading habit that gets closer to the essence.

Thank you.