Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Books... remember them?

When I lived in Auckland, back in the glorious 1980s, there was one place in the city I would regularly frequent.

I'm talking about the University Bookshop which was, at the time (from memory) on a corner in Victoria Street.

What a fantastic place that was. So many books on so many exciting tech/science subjects, including computers and related technology.

You do remember books don't you?

It seems like only yesterday, even though it was forty years ago, that some of my most prized possessions were the many different books that filled the bookcases around my home.

These were tangible repositories of knowledge, something you could fee, touch and actually own.

Within their covers was a wealth of information and back then, reading a book was often the only way you could acquire such information -- short of attending some form of tertiary education.

These days books seem to have fallen from fashion and it's not hard to understand why that might be. Books are a snapshot, a moment in time and while that may be great for historians, it's not nearly as useful when the subject matter is something as rapidly evolving as computer science.

Today, instead of relying on hundreds of kilos of dead tree flesh, stained with inked symbols, knowledge is usually accessed through blinky streams of light routed through hair-like strands of glass fibre. An entire world of information is at our fingertips, no matter the time of day, no matter where we are.

The internet and computer-based devices have utterly changed the world and all but destroyed the value of printed books, at least for reference and informational purposes.

Sadly, the truth of this statement has now become more than obvious with the liquidation of The Auckland University bookstore.

Textbooks are so last century, it would appear.

I'm a little bit conflicted by this.

On the one hand, I still do enjoy the tactile joys of leafing through a good reference book, perhaps while winding down after a busy day and relaxing in bed prior to the quest for sleep. There's also something substantive about a bookcase stuffed with weighty tomes containing esoteric knowledge that is immensely valuable to myself but just gibberish to my neighbour.

On the other hand, it's nice to have the space back and I certainly won't miss lugging countless boxes of books that are so incredibly heavy when packed into a small space -- should I ever decide to move house again. It's also so much easier and more efficient to find stuff when you can simply type in a query to a search engine instead of consulting an index or skimming through related material before stumbling on the information you need.

The ready availability of e-ink-based readers that are thin, lightweight and operate for months on a single charge have also brought the utility of books to the concept of electronically stored information. Now you can have hundreds or thousands of books all conveniently stored in a device that can sit comfortably on the bedside table or your desk.

Fortunately, outside of the reference world, books are not dead. There are some works of literature that will always best consumed by way of ink stains on volumes of dead-tree flesh. Those coffee-table photographic collections just aren't the same on an electronic display. The timeless works of great writers sometimes deserve the dignity of a leather binding with gold inlay.

And, come the apocalypse, books will still function to 100 percent capacity, even after all the EMP and destruction of our communications infrastructure.

Or maybe I'm just old-school.

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

Here is a PERMANENT link to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font