The End of Paper

I was reading the Sunday New York Times yesterday (I know, I'm a little slow). I was reading it on paper, too. While riding the recumbent exercise bike. This article was interesting. If you don't care to jump over to their WEB site and read it, it was all about the slow but sure death of the printed encyclopedia. The publishers are moving online.

I remember the last encyclopedia I owned. It was my childhood one, purchased at great sacrifice by my parents, no doubt. It had a few years worth of 'yearbooks' which were attempts to update the thing with the changing times. The set fit into a coffee table with room for the basic volumes under glass at two ends with slots for the volumes and room on the sides for yearbooks and other books. My parents gave us that coffee table with the books and we had it in the house for a long time until we decided it was in the way of our plans. We sold it to some young college kids in a garage sale who packed it in the trunk of some old '50's car they'd restored. I think anyway. Wonder what every happened to it? I don't even remember the brand. Not the high end Britannica for sure. My parents couldn't afford that. But not the World Book either.

The end of paper has been predicted for some time. (The photo was taken this morning of a shelf in the office I'm trying to clean out. I know. Don't say it.)

In small ways we are escaping to bits and bytes. We don't get paper statements for some accounts now. One bank sends statements, but, at least, they print facsimiles of the checks and don't send them back. I have a couple of cubic feet of old statements and checks (from the early '90's) from our business that I've been shredding. Even though the bank accounts don't exist anymore. Still there are our signatures.

I'm still tossing magazines apace. I have no problem letting go of some titles. And The New Yorker I have on DVD up through February 2007 which makes it easier to toss any that are a little old. Well, easy is too strong.

I have about three cubic feet of old journals. Written in longhand on paper. I have an idea that scanning and/or transcribing can shrink this. But maybe not in my lifetime. So maybe I'll move a couple of boxes to storage. That's not so bad. If it wasn't for the books. Right now I'd say that we have about thirty cubic feet of books, if not more, that we haven't agreed among ourselves to get rid of.

The end of paper won't happen on our watch, I guess.