looking forward to the fast-approaching day when he'll be able to get rid of his many books, leaving his walls even emptier. Their contents, too, will be digitized, turned into files that can be displayed on a handy e-book reader like Amazon's Kindle.
He writes: "I’ve long felt a conscious glow when surrounded by book-lined walls; for many years my vision of ideal peace included them, along with a comfy chair and music in the air. But as I age I’ve started to feel increasingly crowded by possessions in general and media artifacts in particular." Physical books, he says, "are toast," and that's "a good thing."
However all he will be doing is replacing one clutter with another
When Tim Bray throws out his books, he may well have a neater, less dusty home. But he will not have reduced the clutter in his life, at least not in the life of his mind. He will have simply exchanged the physical clutter of books for the mental clutter of the web. He may discover, when he's carried that last armload of books to the dumpster, that he's emptied more than his walls.
Ht-Andrew Sullivan
No comments:
Post a Comment