Paper and the Apocalypse

I have always been a reader. Well, once I learned to read, I mean. And a book hoarder, too. I must have owned and read all The Babysitters Club books over and over for years and years. Once I discovered Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie and anything by Louisa May Alcott and Judy Blume, my life was complete. I was born in 1980 and didn't really have the need or the means for any kind of technology until I graduated high school in 1998. Even then, I thought of it as some kind of crazy luxury to have a cellular phone and email was just the weirdest thing to me. I can only imagine how those older than me must have felt. Well, those days are long since past and we now have the disturbing images of family dinners with everyone texting silently as they eat and third graders riding their bikes home from school with a cell phone as big as their little child palm pressed to their little ear. Laptop computers are everywhere, cell phones are commonplace, in fact, my husband and I haven't had a landline since 2003. Now there is the iPad, iPhone, and we are living in an iWorld. I can access any novel on my teeny tiny little phone and the iPad makes it seem as though the page is turning. If you haven't seen it or tried it, you should. It's kind of amazing. And very disturbing at the same time.

Now, I can see why this can be a positive change in terms of saving trees and paper and making literacy even more accessible, but I can't help but note the dark underbelly of all of this technology. Perhaps I have read too much science fiction and seen too many "technology causes the end of the world" type movies, but I can't help but half (okay, I admit more than half) believe that there is truth in all of it. Literacy rates are still not where they should be, even in this country as developed as it is. Furthermore, I doubt that making reading on the iPad so like actual reading will make it "cool" or whatever and with all the crazy games that are being churned out, I doubt many do much reading on something where they can have all kinds of gaming fun at a mere touch of the fingertip.

All that being said, there is still nothing that compares to the good, old fashioned book. The weight of a hardback, the portability and sleek cover of a paperback, the pungently sweet earthy smell of the paper of a new book just cracked or the musty damp smell of a much worn and much loved novel, the sweet caressing whisper of a page turned, the black letters marching past each leaf, line after line onward to the conclusion... there is nothing that could take the place of all that. No movie can ever truly capture what was first meant to be read and enjoyed. I even read once that the movie is like an ADD version of a book, with mostly the best parts just blown up and thrown at the viewer so fast so that they don't lose interest because if someone can't sit and watch a two hour movie, then how on earth can they devote the time and energy it takes to conquer a whole 500-page novel? My friend, that takes more than just a two hour stint in an easy chair with a bowl of popcorn, no, a book is meant as an escape that takes hours and hours where you open your mind to this world of words that you get to re-create and interpret in such a way that only you can. Sometimes it becomes something even greater and so much more than what the author even intended. The written word has such a life of it's own...

So, when all the technology starts to break down and the apocalypse has us all in dirt caverns underneath the terrain and we are left with nothing to do but to re-build society, you are welcome to come visit me and borrow a book, because I assure you, I don't think there will be electricity for you to plug in your Playstation. I am sure those "How to Make a Candle" classes at the Y will come in handy, as well...