The Virtual Word

Well with the launch of the iPad there are a lot of nervous newspaper people and various other print related people airing their views on the demise of the written word...etc.

Now, I love books, don’t get me wrong, but I also love hand written letters, local shops and hand made crafts. The truth is, however, I don’t use any of them anymore. I write emails, go to the supermarket and buy the same machine made crap that you do.

So...if newspapers die, well, more than half of them should anyway....and books get less read and more expensive...well...the forests of the world may heave a sigh of relief, but it is probably a cultural thing.

I, personally, will miss the smell and feel of a good book, but the next generations may not, never having experienced that closeness.....ah well...that’s progress, apparently...

Books are a part of my generations culture, and Twits a part of the current generations. Fast food, fast remarks, low attention span etc...well.. that cannot in any rational way be blamed on the type of media you use to view the written word.

All words are virtual. All words are psychic phenomena. Stupidity is not contained in the mode of delivery, only in the mind of the viewer, reader, listener.

Now...ease of publication, however, does have an effect on the quantity of material available, and, therefore, there will be more dross online. Just look at uTube....anyone can publish any old crap they want. You have to search for the gems.....

Many people in ‘developed’ countries have a music library some would have killed for 40 years ago, and I can easily understand that the idea of traveling on holiday with several thousand books in your pocket would be great. Just think how much easier research would be...

In those old days before the printing press, when books were written by hand, you would want to make sure that it was well worth copying before you started, and buying/ordering a book would have been a huge investment and an heirloom. That kept culuture/information in the hands of very few, so....this new iPad is really just the logical next step in the democratisation of information foreseen and heralded by those few forward thinking individuals who gave us the web.

Now....that also means that those horribly protective parents will have to live with the idea that their children may read pornography.... Fanaticism and racism etc will give governments the excuse to try and interfere..

.but... information is amoral. That should be obvious by now....

I think we will have to just say...well done, again, Mac...


:))