I have a very special relationship with libraries, specifically the Carnegie Library in Onehunga to which I took my grandson last week. It is now just a building, having long since been converted to a cafe.
<I wonder what Kindle will do to libraries. If Kindle is as phenomenally successful as you think it might be, libraries will disappear as they will be perceived as another gathering spot for dreaded Luddites. What a shame that would be.
Please feel free now to tell us why libraries are no longer a good thing. >
You have tossed the most delicious possible bait in front of me. I am on the hook. However, I'm not quite in the mood for the full-scale rant which this deserves. What is required is my maximus ultimus rant for which I am right now simply not geared up for psychologically.
While my intellectual and ideological underpinnings were under construction long before I was first taken to the Carnegie Library in Onehunga from our home in Mangere Bridge, I put the children's library section as the start of the serious business.
They had books on rockets, nuclear reactors, biological and natural processes and other things which lit me up like a Xmas tree.
At the time, I didn't know that Andrew Carnegie was an admirable Scotsman who made a fortune in steel in the USA who spent a fortune on building libraries around the world, including in my village. Google has a lot of information on him.
That's odd, Google doesn't have a photo of it that I can find. But here's one of the Carnegie Library in Thames which is very similar: thameslibrary.co.nz
Decades ago after contemplating the long era of humans, I realized the only things left a thousand or two later are DNA and knowledge. The pyramids are worn down, the gold is eroded or lost, iron is rusted, windows abraded and broken. The material realm we inhabit is cast off like a hermit crab's shell. Angkor Wat, the palace in Mysore, the Colosseum lose their life.
What remains is the DNA, in the form of a big pool of successful DNA, and knowledge of how to use our DNA in the context of the surroundings of the day.
People stored knowledge in their heads historically, then, in a marvel of inventiveness, mass written production came on stream with Carnegie Libraries being a store of so much. The Onehunga one was my first access to knowledge outside the pathetic efforts provided by school teachers and the limited information available orally from family and friends and books in the house.
Now, in a theologically significant upgrade to knowledge stores, Google is on stream. When I think of my Carnegie Library experience and what's available from Google on-line and via my CDMA EV-DO investments, it's stone age vs the new realm.
Knowledge is starting to separate itself from our DNA. DNA is turning out to be nothing but a launching pad for extra-somatic knowledge, or, more precisely, consciousness. Just as the Carnegie Library turned out to be nothing but a launching pad for me.
I have taken photos of the Onehunga Carnegie Library. I worship at its door sometimes.
My father died last century. He and the Carnegie Library were built at about the same time. Life has moved on. As I write this, Tarken-san is chatting to me on Skype as he upgrades Zenbu to bring on-stream some more servers in an integrated gang to provide multiply redundant servers. Right now, there are, let me check, 14 people using Zenbu, cerfing in cyberspace. That's a lot more than would be in Onehunga Carnegie Library if it was still in service. The information they are able to obtain and send is almost unimaginable from the time the men were building the Onehunga Carnegie Library.
I am very grateful for my father and Andrew Carnegie. But I back my son to do even better.
When the Kindle is using Wi-Fi, it will be able to obtain the vast cyberspace realm via Zenbu. Young boys like I was will be able to have the huge resources of cyberspace available to them from their Kindle and kin, wherever they might be, delivered via QUALCOMM, Globalstar and Zenbu.
Sorry I am treating it lightly, but I'm off to Latteland now, and I'll take my laptop so I can connect via RoamAD's technology provided by Kordia - RoamAD being another Wi-Fi investment I made a few years ago.
I have tried to get that useless layabout Jay Chen in gear to phone Hu Jintao and get China Gung Ho on 450MHz CDMA/OFDM so billions of people and cyberspace Itself can really get cerfing. I have offered him a swanky device using the service when he gets it going. Maybe I upgraded the offer to two. He, like a hedonistic heathen, is ignoring China's plight, leaving them to their mistaken TD-SCDMA plans which will cost them a fortune, lead them up a technological blind alley and waste a great opportunity.
Libraries, like Andrew Carnegie, my father, and increasingly me, have had their day. But they have a place. Like farriers still do. I back my son and cyberspace. zenbu.net.nz
Mqurice |
