(Continuing the theme of the rapid pace of technology from the previous post, here are some more thoughts. Have a happy New Year.)
During the break when students are away and the university is closed, I have been working on a major project at home: excavating my desk.
For ten years, more or less, I have been slowly accumulating piles of papers, newspaper clippings, books, notebooks, pens and paperclips, photos and obsolescent technology on the big wooden desk with shelves and cubbyholes that I bought and assembled ten years ago when I started life as a freelance writer and half-hearted businessman.
It is the old technology I am thinking about now. On the shelves above the desk I found tucked away dozens of minicassettes, each with an hour or two of recording of interviews I had taped for book projects in the early 2000s. I also found the recorder, the size of a candy bar, that I had used to make the tapes. It had done good service for many tens of hours before it seized up and stopped. These days I use a high-end digital recorder that I can plug into my computer and download. I swept all of the minicassettes, which I could never listen to again without tracking down a compatible player, into a plastic trash bag, along with the cassette player, a one megapixel digital camera whose cable I had lost, a bunch of ordinary size audio tapes I had failed to label, and various other pieces of junk media. The books, however, just went back on the shelves.
I have heard the death knell of books and libraries, but my desk tells me a different story. It is the new technologies that are here for a season or two and then are out of date and unusable. Books abide. At least I hope that is true, because I did not get a Kindle for Christmas.
I did!
I certainly hope there is not a death knell for books…we librarians would really DiSLIKE that!
As long as my shelves hold out, there will forever be books on them. (dust and all….) The electronic age has caused my Mom’s records to be lost each and every time a computer or a blackberry or a palm pilot dies. Funny, but my old-fashioned ink-and-paper records endure….. and the battery never needs to be charged.
I taught allllll my kids (and students) that the books they receive are to be treated with awe and respect. There was only one book I gladly threw away…. some “childrens” Christmas book about an evil toy soldier. No joy in that book, for anybody.