The Death of the Book

I heard a very sad thing a few weeks ago. We all knew it was going to happen, but since being out of the academic track for almost a decade, I didnt know how far we had come.

Cue dramatic music and … pause.

The book, has died.

The Democratisation of Knowledge

During my childhood, almost every Sunday, whilst my father was at work, trucking and picking up vegetables from the countryside, hours away, my mother would take me and my siblings to the city library.

The library, like any good repository of knowledge, was in the centre of town, accessible via a good 30min bus ride. We would spend the day reading and wandering the long isles of shelves and catalogues of the 4 story building, spending most of our time in the basement in the childrens section, and then slowly, as we grew older, making the logical progression through the young adults section, arts, non-fiction and reference on the top floor.

We would read as much of the book/s as we could, before the chime of last call for checkout would cause us to rush to the counter to the check out the books we wished to borrow for the week.

We were often restricted as much by our small size and our ability to carry the piles of books we would checkout, as much as the library 5 limit book policy. Once home, we would spend the week reading the books, with the index and bibliography pages leading us to look for the books referenced, the following Sunday.

This was the lengthily and drawn out process of knowledge and research for most of society, less than two decades ago. Information was palpable and kept within the confines of a practical storage, encapsulated and physical. The shape of the encyclopaedia brittanica, the dictionary all so bulky, irreduciable, cumberson and costly.

Its hard to imagine that so much has changed so quickly.

Information use to be the bastion of the rich, the devout and the academically committed.Only the rich could really afford a higher education, with access to learning resources that lower-socio economic groups in society would struggle to obtain. Those who dedicated their lives to the church also had access to institutionalised resources and a privilege to a centuries of accumulated experience, whilst those who had the commitment, could of course learn, but with great difficulty and over time.

The internet has democratised the information landscape. Levelled the playing field.

The internet has broken down the few remaining walls that prevent better access to knowledge- broken down the physical dimensions  of travel, distance and accessibility, including a new affordability.

Today we are seers.

We have the ability to be all knowing and all seeing, with a few strokes of a key.

But I’m not quite sure that society as a collective has embraced this unique opportunity. If we did, we would be loudly proclaiming that the information revolution needs to continue. That access to the internet should be a democratic right, free and easy.

That every person has a born right to a laptop, netbook or device to be able to access the net. That every person should have an email address, an identity and a understanding that the world is no longer about limits and copy right. It should all be there, for us, whenever we want it. Wi Fi. Open Source. Free Music.  The Gutenberg project, the eBook, the kindle, the transformation of the written word into the electronic. The accessibility of all information to all people, all the time.  Imagine then, what people could do.

But we first need to realise that this transformation is here and needs to continue.

In the 80′s, almost every Sunday, whilst my father would be at work with his trucking company picking up vegetables from the countryside hours away, my mother would take my sister, brother and I to the library to read. The day would fly by as we wandered the long isles of shelves and catalogues of the 4 story building.We would read as much of the book/s as we could, before the chime of last call for checkout would cause us to rush to the counter to the check out the books we wished to borrow for the week.We would run with piles of books clutched in our small hands to the ground level checkout, often restricted as much by our size as the library 5 limit book policy.

The library, like any good repository of knowledge, was in the centre of town, a good 30min bus ride.

We would get home and read over the week each book – some for pleasure, and many required reading for our school projects. The index and bibliography pages would lead us to look for the books referenced, the following weekend.

Returning to the narrative at hand