There is a time to listen and a time to read.
That time is now. At lunch or in line.
The WSJ runs a a picture of an “early adopter” (old lady wrapped herself in a good book, digital that is).
For her, what a lifetime that was: out of the house to go to work (with sandwich bread), maybe as a telephone dispatcher, then came home to TV dinners with a Chevy in the driveway. Meanwhile, the Maytag man took care of her laundry and her husband the lawn.
Now she has retired, reading a book which is resided in the cloud, while keeping in touch with relatives on Facebook.
(I should mention the Pill).
Reading time has always been hard to come by. It’s at the top of the pyramid of chores (shopping, cooking, cleaning etc…). Now, reading is readily available as the headline news you see everywhere (when I was hooked on “the girl with a dragon tatoo”, I wished I had a comparable service so I could access my bookmark anywhere).
It’s interesting to see if readership increases as a result of better access.
Or it’s more profitable just to sell picks and pans for another Gold Rush.
One thing is for sure. Those so-called Independent Book Stores will join the fate of Independent Telephone companies of last century i.e. giving ways to an oligarchy of heavy weights. Too bad Google ebooks couldn’t be renamed with an “A”, as in Apple, Amazon and ATT.
But by its colorful logo, we already got the idea that the company is into creativity, colorful-ness and cloud-orientation. At least, it got an A as in Algorithm which suggests your next book, even before the title becomes available. It’s an age of “cognitive surplus”.
Everything is just the tip of the iceberg. 1 per cent visible, 99 percent invisible.
Time for reflection. A time to die, a time to live.
Thang Nguyen 555 