Originally written on Friday, February 25, 2011

This week has seen a small, but I think quite important shift in the way humans consumer information, both fact and fiction.

Computers have been with us for while; I’ve written about it here in the past. I’ve commented on the rise of the portable computer, the hand held computer and bizarre popularity of Steve Jobs ‘n’ Co’s awful series of hand held devices that they insist on naming with a pro-noun. I’ve also written about what I see as the best hand held device ever, the Psion 5x, here.

Regular readers will know I am not a fan of the devices that Jobs, so rather self indulgently calls “magical and revolutionary”, or as most people are concerned, over priced, under spec’ed and with more restrictive practice that would make the Chinese government wince with a feeling of awe, wonderment and tinged with disappointment at their own small achievements.

These are not mobile ‘phones any more, they are the next generation of PDA, the electronic assistant that was once dominated by the likes of Psion and Palm. However, to keep their users addicted to their new devices, their makers are looking at more and more bizarre ways of keeping the user interacting with this devices, lest they become bored and reject their device and end up with a disgruntled Tamagotchi. Yes, this is 1984!

With my deep seated love of all things Apple and it’s more then distasteful hommage to the brilliant Alan Turing, I am not going to go on a rant about how Apple remove software from devices, or about how they are trying to extract 30% from the sale price of items purchased on your device etcetera, etcetera….. Well not right now anyway.

The mobile device, regardless of the manufacturer or the software it is running, is a mobile device, capable of some quite interesting things at times. It allows the user to immerse themselves for minutes at a time, banging away on a small screen whilst listening to the tinny rantings as it reminds you of it’s continued existence.

However, the rise of the hand held computer, I think has put, if not the last, a fairly significant nail in the coffin lid of one of the greatest inventions Man has ever created : the book.

This week, venerable book retailer Borders has, in America, filed for bankruptcy protection, because, essentially, falling sales meant that it’s debt and it’s ‘value’ were almost equal and with a forecast that one would soon be bigger than the other and not in a good way…..

Dillons, another venerable retailer of all things booky, was long since subsumed into the HMV group, owners of Ottakers and Waterstones, leaving only a handful of book shops to satisfy the demand.

Books. Books are a wonderful thing. They are tactile, with pages of texture that can be turned quickly or slowly, giving the reader the most intimate interaction between author and reader. Books are a personal item, especially books which have been read, re-read and read again. Books can be read anywhere; in the bath, in bed, on the bus or train, in the forest or up a mountain, they are the most versatile of items, wonderful indeed.

They are also the most multi-purpose devices on the face of the planet; they can be used to kill mosquitoes, they can be shoved under the leg of an Edwardian table to prevent occasional tea spillage, they can be thrown at the wall in a fit of pique, can be used as an ad-hoc note book, paper weight, fan and beer mat and, if they are still in one piece, read.

It will be a long time before the book is dead, a long time. However, as more and more people are turning to electronic books, and audio books, the art of reading, the personal intimacy between author and reader is, in my humble opinion, is on a slow and steady decline.

There is another small and I think important thing to remember about books. In the current climate of eco-friendliness, of green issues, global warming and the carbon footprint, the book, the humble book, is at the top of the list of all things eco.

Think about it. Yes, there are trees to chop down to make the book, but, if the human race was clever, and I doubt that we are, we could plant more trees than we chop down. Really, we could.

Moreover, once the tree has been chopped and the book made, it will survive for a long, long time. It needs no further power to make it work, it can be passed from hand to hand many times, and re-used more times than a punch line from a 1970’s stand up comic. It is the ultimate eco-accessory.

Compare that to the average mobile device, with it’s massive rare earth content of lanthanum, cerium, tantalum, neodymium and europium, all of which are exceptionally poisonous, take a massive effort to get out of the ground and are, by their very nature, rare. The politics of rare earths’ is fascinating, with the Chinese currently owning approximately 95% of the worlds reserves. There is a very good article about it all , here.

And then there are the power consumption issues to think about. Not just the ‘where do I charge my mobile’ issue, which is an issue, but the power consumption that 97% of the population do not see nor think about. There are massive data centres consuming giga-watts of dead dinosaurs. Yes, electricity comes from fossil fuels and fossils are….. ?

The data centres that keep Google and Amazon and O2 and Vodafone running are enormous; one switch site consuming enough power to run a small Shetland Island for quite a little while. Google and Amazon provide the content, or at least access to it, O2 and Vodafone provide the connectivity. Why do you always have coverage on your mobile ? Because there are RBS’s or masts out there connected to BSC’s or base station controllers, connected to MSC’s, which, in turn are connected to switch sites. And switch sites have more servers and air conditioning units than one can reasonably conceive.

One small switch site would fit into one large shipping container and would keep circa 500,000 subscribers up and running. The UK has more connected devices than people. That is an awful lot of dino’s!!

And the power consumption of a book ? Bugga all.

And yes, I am aware of the irony of where you are reading this, but then again, I am not Random House.

Sadly.