Books are recyclable and biodegradable.

Now, if only what was written in them was of better quality, so that so many did not deserve to be recycled and to biodegrade!

I love knowing that BEXAR COUNTY has a digital library in the works — I live a few miles from that county line and always thought of San Antonio as a kind of Texas backwater but today the joint is jumping over there.

And even though you and I have this exchange in a silent medium, I will share a kind of silly mistake I heard not so long ago on NPR. A new announcer in Austin, speaking of BEXAR county, pronounced the name: BEX-ARE. For the record it is an old Spanish name pronounced very simply: BEAR — like the critter found in the woods.

As for the digital technological whirl-wind we find ourselves in, hey lets go for the ride!

Roger McNamee on Charlie Rose last night, discussing the future of media, entertainment and consumer technology, asserted that “every 18 months consumer technology becomes twice as powerful and half as expensive.”

That tracks with my experience.

He went on to say, “everything becomes cheaper over time,” and “the ‘means of production’ is in the hands of consumers.”

YES – again that tracks with my experience. I started in print publication in the days when I had to measure a page, cut photographs to fit a window, and paste them on the board for a printer who then made another image for the offset printer.

When I retired, the printer had software that adjusted the ink flow to match the dot-gain on the specific paper rolling through the press.

And that was 10 years ago.

You and I would not be discussing the matter, in this online location, if it were not for the advances in technology.

Owing to the self-same technology, I am publishing a small work on Texas history on my blog – one or two ‘pages’ a month for the next 11 months. After that, I will no doubt take it to a self-published eBook.

As McNamee has said, ‘the means of production is in the hands of consumers but he might have said, IN THE HANDS OF CREATORS.

The only reason I’m doing the blog publishing thing is to maintain my intellectual property rights since I have a reason to suspect that the rights are in jeopardy.

Apparently I am motivated by the suspicion that someone else will claim my stuff if I don’t move on it – so the little book will get finished.

Beyond ePublishing, the capacity for instantly creating a hard copy of a book is just now heating up. So let’s assume I produce some kind of blockbuster publication, how far can I go?

I live in a country town, population less than 5000, but with high-speed internet connectivity through TimeWarner on my street and satellite connections on other streets. Of course I am within 50 miles of a number of large universities. So technology provides me with the opportunity to live in a quiet location, easily travel to UT-Austin, ect., communicate around the world, and create my own written productions. And even publish them.

However, there is a point of diminishing returns embedded in all this self-production. As I see it, that is the point where an agency like yours comes into play.

Your agency’s wisdom of years, your personal connections within the entertainment industry, become unreplaceable. I don’t think technology can bridge the virtues of an agency like yours.

Yeah – I read with a NOOK. And I pray for the welfare of B&N. My dearest hope is that the poor beast we know as a ‘bookstore’ will expand its capacity and services so PROFOUNDLY that in another 10 years we will all be amazed at the morph of B&N from simple little neighborhood bookstore into some kind of industry GIANT.

Kind regards,
Emily

Our library has started checking out e-readers (that’s where I tried one) and they are teaching workshops in the libraries on how to use them, and people are interested. It seems like a great compromise to embracing a book-less library. I do wonder why people have to be so either or all the time.