AFAICT, someone somewhere has been proclaiming the death of books for at least 15 years, and probably more like 20 or 25 (what pops into my head immediately is Nicholas Negroponte's futurist tome, _Being Digital_). I don't think books are going anywhere.
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 8:09 AM, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I bet that more "first-quality stuff" was written in Athens, with a citizen
> population of 10,000, from the period from Sophocles to Aristotle than has
> been written in the entire world in the past 50 years.
>
> I actually can't think of any first-quality stuff written in the past 50
> years other than Heidegger's essays in the 60s.
>
> --- On Sat, 9/5/09, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > This is not necessarily a bad thing. John Quincy Adams at
> > the age of 10
> > read Smollet's 10 vol. history of England and a few other
> > things yet
> > apologized to his father for being lazy that summer. (From
> > memory --
> > something like that.) But there aren't many of us can match
> > J.Q. Adams,
> > and the body of really first-rate and important material
> > continues to
> > grow, at an increasing rate, as literacy and population
> > increase. It is
> > just as with piles of stuff in your basement. After a while
> > it is just
> > as though much of the stuff doesn't exist because it is
> > hidden by the
> > rest. Similarly if you keep old magzines. And so forth. The
> > very
> > increase in "information" (quotes because I want to include
> > knowledge
> > and even wisdom as well) begins to hide itself. Some
> > indiscriminate
> > pruning might be a boon. I really can't bring myself to be
> > too sad about
> > the burning of the library at Alexandria.
> >
> > Carrol
> >
> > ___________________________________
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> >
>
>
>
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