Recently the  Bruce Library System had to get rid of a large dumpster of books.  It's understandable that at a certain point old books will glut a library system.  Some get damaged and some become relics, I guess, but it still seems sad.  I can't throw away a book.

I remember the nightmare that Bertrand Russell Nobel Laureate and Philosopher-Mathematician had late in life.  He had written a great book. 

The Principia Mathematica is a 3-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910-1913.  He was one of the great minds of all time and lived to be very old.

His nightmare saw a young person on a ladder examining an old set of the Principia.  He blows the dust off it, looks puzzled and then tosses it into a barrel for burning.  The fruit of Russell's youth is gone in an instant.

How does the system decide when a book has seen its day?  I think the criteria goes something like this:

• The book is damaged
• The library has too many copies.
• They have put it on sale for $1.00 and nobody bought it.
• They have offered it to charitable organizations with no takers.
• It does not look good to somebody.

I've been a regular at many sales when the centre on Highway 21 used to post the sign ... "Book Sale".  I've found some real gems.  Let me give you two examples:

1. A Coffee Table book about the Birds of Canada donated to the Chesley Library.  I asked the woman behind the counter why such a beautiful book with  hundreds of colour plates would be sold for  $1.00?  She said it was because nobody checked it out.  The last page said: "For reference use only, not to be checked out."  I saved that book.
2. Once I found a classic book in a Hanover Book Store about WWI.  It was disposed of by the system and picked up by the store owner who sold it to me for $7.95.  Neither party knew that they had a first edition with fold out maps that was worth a lot of money to collectors.  I saved the book.

With the new Google world, what will happen to old books?  Google is digitizing books by the millions in their Cooperative Library Project.  For example, at the University of Michigan they will gobble up 7,000,000 volumes in 6 years.  Now do you know why the Google stock is so high?

What will happen in the next 20 years?  It's possible that most, if not all of the important books of the world will be eaten for dinner by Google, which is ok, if I can have a flat and flexible panel display that I can read in bed and bend into the back pocket of my summer shorts as I walk to the beach.  It will be fine, if nobody restricts what I read or charges unreasonably for what I read.  I like the fact that falling trees don't have to feed my addiction.  I would love to get rid of the display too!

Now pushing the envelope a bit, what will happen when the next generation of changes comes long after I'm gone?  Guess what?  There will be a last link and a last URL too.  All information will be flat in the sense that each piece will be as easy to reach as any other and will be  indexed, but how we get it will be by embedded chips so that  we will  have a giant Google brain that can surf man's information pool without perceptible hyperlinks or bulky computers.  We will be participants in our own automation and will become a new species in the same way that Homo-Erectus somehow rose above the tall grass to peer into the future.  It's just another step in the ladder of evolution.

We are in mid-stream of this next movement.  Man is altering the way man thinks.  The kids are Google kids and I for one, don't like to work on projects with  people who are computer challenged because communication is difficult and you have to print stuff for them.  If you are in a group of 8 seniors, one or two may say:  "I guess I have to get a computer."  Kids don't say that.  They are on the way to bigger brains, if they can stay away from the violent games and junk. 

I wonder if some time in the future, somebody will look at the last URL or something I've placed on some disk some place and say to himself.  We don't need that anymore..... gone.... pooooooooooof.

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