I was at my craft group today and saw a trolley filled to the brim with books of all kinds; and wondered how they came to be there. Out the back of the place I go to - a community centre - there are boxes upon boxes of books, all donated by people who don't want them anymore.
Some of them are first editions, some are paperbacks, a lot have never been read and yet, they end up at this place to be sold for less than a dollar.
I sit in my home office absolutely surrounded by books - they are my passion, something I love to collection, something I'd never get rid of (unless I had to and found I didn't need them anymore). However, I was just thinking about it today: what would the world look like if we all turned our home libraries into a digital format; if we ditched the traditional page-turners, the tomes, the lovely books on the bookshelves which would adorn our homes, hallways, living rooms, studies, spare rooms, basements, bedrooms and garages?
How would we cope bringing our children into a world where they'd go into a library where you could download a book onto your Kindle in an empty room with just a few desks for searching and a counter to check out the book/s and then go home and read them until a month later when they'd 'disappear' from your reader to be 'returned' to the library.
Better still: how would we explain all those retro-style movies and television shows which have those book-stuffed bookcases in the libraries and houses, where people in those shows walked up to those bookcases, reached up and physically pulled on off the shelf, opened its cover and turned the page. I could imagine our children asking, 'What are they doing? Why don't they just tap their reader?' when the show was made in the 1990's and 2000's.
I couldn't imagine a world without physical books in it. There are people who say that books are going to disappear from our world - to be replaced by readers and the digital age. But that's what they've said about vinyls and music; which has done a complete circle... they faded, but didn't vanish. People loved them enough to cause them to make a come-back. Books will never vanish from our lives; and I don't think this would ever happen in my lifetime - to the next. They are just something which will become more refined, more distinct and we won't get rid of because they've been with us for so long, we don't know how to get rid of them.
Some of them are first editions, some are paperbacks, a lot have never been read and yet, they end up at this place to be sold for less than a dollar.
I sit in my home office absolutely surrounded by books - they are my passion, something I love to collection, something I'd never get rid of (unless I had to and found I didn't need them anymore). However, I was just thinking about it today: what would the world look like if we all turned our home libraries into a digital format; if we ditched the traditional page-turners, the tomes, the lovely books on the bookshelves which would adorn our homes, hallways, living rooms, studies, spare rooms, basements, bedrooms and garages?
How would we cope bringing our children into a world where they'd go into a library where you could download a book onto your Kindle in an empty room with just a few desks for searching and a counter to check out the book/s and then go home and read them until a month later when they'd 'disappear' from your reader to be 'returned' to the library.
Better still: how would we explain all those retro-style movies and television shows which have those book-stuffed bookcases in the libraries and houses, where people in those shows walked up to those bookcases, reached up and physically pulled on off the shelf, opened its cover and turned the page. I could imagine our children asking, 'What are they doing? Why don't they just tap their reader?' when the show was made in the 1990's and 2000's.
I couldn't imagine a world without physical books in it. There are people who say that books are going to disappear from our world - to be replaced by readers and the digital age. But that's what they've said about vinyls and music; which has done a complete circle... they faded, but didn't vanish. People loved them enough to cause them to make a come-back. Books will never vanish from our lives; and I don't think this would ever happen in my lifetime - to the next. They are just something which will become more refined, more distinct and we won't get rid of because they've been with us for so long, we don't know how to get rid of them.
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