This idea of the “mechanical-writing press” to produce large numbers of “books” which are all the same is the most dangerous idea. How easy now to let out the most dangerous ideas, even Evil Ideas from the Imp himself. For centuries the Great Ideas of our world have been prayerfully maintained in the many Holy Monastaries of the known world, where Men of God carefully and faithfully reproduce Worthy Books. What now when we let the least pauper lay senseless and even evil words to paper and then distribute them as though they are the Words of Light? This must be stopped if we are to preserve our world in a State of Grace. Let us find and destroy these dangerous Machines Of The Devil now and preserve Our Lord’s world as He surely meant it to be.

Now to the future…

The gatekeepers of information have always tried to delay the free flow of information. What they do not realize is that the written word and the spoken word and now even the thought word are merging into a social flow of thought. We cannot imagine what will follow the world of information transparency, just as the makers of the first presses would never have imagined a world where information from thousands of miles away was immediately available. We can certainly imagine what shape our emerging information world will take, and it will eventually mean books will go the way of hand-copies books and scrolls.

How long will this take? How long will it take to get inexpensive laptops into the hands of the world’s poorest children? How long for so many things that together play into the 99.999% completion of this transformation? It will mean fundamental changes…goodbye bookstores online and offline, libraries transform once again to a form we can hardly visualize even today, so long to magazine racks and newsstands. Ironically this will track with the increase in availability of information of all forms and types, and the beginning of social thinking through the continual online discourse of masses of individuals.

Sorry, gatekeepers, you will soon be standing guard at gates without any surrounding walls. It’s okay…you’re not the first, and you will not be the last. We’re patient. People grow old and die, and new people with new ideas come along and what you hold holy today will be history tomorrow.