The idea for Gutenbrick started as a bit of a joke. I had just finished reading “The End of Reading is Here” by Rose Horowitch and was reflecting on ways that technology could be an aid to the struggling reader. I failed to come up with a single good idea.
However, I did have a bad idea. What if I made reading more like Instagram? More like TikTok? What if each page contained so few words that you couldn’t help but finish the page, and what if every page turn rewarded the user (ahem, reader) with a bit of haptic feedback to trigger that app-like dopamine hit? And what if you had the ability to block distracting apps until you had completed a predetermined amount of reading?
Gutenbrick is an app I built to help make phone time into reading time. Obviously, you should read real books, but if your attention span is atrophied to the point where reading a full page is a challenge, then this is the app for you.
Gutenbrick converts (or reformats) public-domain books so each page holds one to five sentences you tap through. Your phone will vibrate a bit with each tap. This is intended to increase “engagement.” If the reader requires more stimulus, I’ve added “iPad kid” mode, which is designed to maximize dopamine release through vibrations, lights, and an XP system. I do not encourage its use nor do I actually think it will encourage any reading. But on the other hand, if Gutenbrick can be the reason that somebody reads a few words of Dickens, Shelley, Dostoyevsky (or any other writer whose words have entered the public domain), instead of scrolling on TikTok, then all my work will be worth it!
As an additional aside, I built out the first version of this app with Claude Code, but frustrated by constant rate-limiting, I switched to an open-source model (DeepSeekFlashV4) and an open-source (and free) coding harness (OpenCode).