eBooks to Regain Paradise!!!

Well, here I have no misgivings about the miracle of technology because with ebooks the entire world can be educated IF all the countries of the world make these devices available (rather than guns and ammunition) for communities that will never in the foreseeable future be able to afford schools or libraries, nor the people themselves computers and televisions, but ebooks, now these are within the realms of possibility, like radios run on batteries and the new radios run by solar energy built into the radios themselves. Virtually every African in Africa owns one, and if they don't, then it is their ambition to own one because it is the link to the education they so desperately desire. I'm sure ebook readers can be run on batteries and the sun! We've put men on the moon, surely we can put batteries in Kindles and other such devices, and provide one computer per community to download free books! The sheer potential is mind blowing in the extreme.

Imagine being able to provide EVERYONE with the opportunity to learn to read, and then to have the means to read ALL the great literature of the world, all the greatest books and ideas in all the disciplines from every culture and curve of the world that have recorded man's ascent to the present moment where he is at the threshold of either obliterating it all by ignorance, or by finally coming to his senses to USE these tools to eradicate ignorance and thereby unite everyone to make the world what it can be, paradise - again!

As to the exercise, well, I have been thinking about buying a Kindle for ages because that way I can get all the books I want to read without adding yet more bookshelves to my already overburdened house where there are books in every room, including the loo! I can't part with them yet, but with age the burden of keeping them clean and safely stored will become a problem. This way I can retire to a single room somewhere someday and be able to read and read and read into the vast unknown even choosing the size of the print, or, if eyes have failed, then converted to audio - happily plugged into whatever devices have been invented by then to continue breathing and reading and listening and marvelling.

I've been a great fan of Project Gutenberg forever simply because I can delve into the classics I can no longer find in the local libraries and bookshops. Along these same lines I was fortuitously fortunte enough to find a CD Rom on a sale about ten years ago ($5.00) with over 4000 works of literature that I use extensively to indulge myself in things long remembered but no longer around because of space constraints.

THIS is what we must make known to our clients if we want to live to be librarians another day. Use the libraries for the ephemeral, the stuff that will be here today and gone tomorrow, as we are indeed doing, but at the same time make the people, especially the young ones, starting with children, AWARE of the unimaginable joys that are there for the looking and listening and reading and learning from the global collection of those works of the mind that have withstood the test of time and kept us from annihilating ourselves completely - yet!

I know I am ranting, but THIS IS the way to go for the future and, here I swallow every nasty and negative word I have said about the Web when I say that, if playing around on all these silly sites leads to saner sites and insights, then by all means let the whole wide world play on the Web and just maybe, maybe, maybe future generations will create a world of peace and safety for all the creatures that share this beleaguered and yet wholly forgiving planet.

Oh, brave new world that has such ideas and devices in it, let us not use these gifts to diminish ourselves, but to uplift ourselves. That must be our heartfelt prayer to ourselves, to each other, to the known, and to the great unknown.

For the exercise I used Project Gutenberg to search for Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays, first series - very easily done.

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