I like feeling the grass on my bare feet when I walk in the summer.
I like feeling rain before I duck under cover.
I like actually turning pages in a book.
I love books…and I really appreciate holding a real book.
Now, there’s something cool about having your whole library on a couple of shiny pieces of round plastic.
It’s nice to be able to carry it around that easily. I couldn’t carry my real library in a backpack.
I couldn’t carry the whole thing in one load in my pickup.
I have a lot of books.
For Christmas, I got a copy of a book by a guy named Kevin Kelly.
The book is called “Cool Tools”.
Here’s a link to it on Amazon….
You can’t “look inside” on this picture…you’d have to go to Amazon.com to do that.
I love this book.
It was quite the Christmas present.
I was a big fan of the old Whole Earth Catalogs…and, like the author acknowledges, this was inspired by those big books of information that Stewart Brand put together in the early 1970’s.
It’s the amped up, full color version of what I remember the old Whole Earth books being like…kind of a jumping off point for expanding your knowledge…a “rabbit hole” to disappear into and come back out of with some new possibility to ponder for a while.
One thing that I did notice about this book, even though the author is pleasingly “old school” and presents solid reasons for why he wanted to publish a “real” book (instead of only an electronic version)…which I really appreciated, is that instead of publishing full “path” information (website addresses, isbn numbers, etc.), he puts these little squares that we’re supposed to scan with our smart phones that will take us directly to the website were we can either order or read more about the product he’s reviewing.
What the….heck?
I don’t own a smartphone. They are cool. You can do some mighty cool things with a smartphone. I don’t have one of them, though.
I can’t scan those funky little squares with my Tracfone.
Nothing happens if I try.
(In my defense, I never tried to scan the squares with my Tracfone. I knew that even if it was a “triple minute for life” version that nothing would happen. I already knew that. You need a much smarter phone than the one I use.)
It’s funny that even if you present the situation as being a “I’m a throwback! Real books are where it’s at! Give me a real book any day…” presentation , you send a strong mixed message when all you provide are the little scannable squares for getting further information.
I can use Google…I can track stuff down…it’s doable to have it set up for me to have to do some legwork like that.
That’s really not so hard.
Those little squares just drive home the fact that I’m too cheap to buy a really cool phone that does a lot more than let me call the house.
I am too cheap to advance myself technologically.
I want to be in the “scan the square” club, too, someday.
Darn little scannable squares.
This is a cool book. Lots of tools that I’d never seen….and lots of variations of tools that made me think, “Ahhhhhhh, that makes sense. That would be so much better. Hmmmmmm….”. I really did think…”Hmmmmmm….” a couple of times already.
Those little squares throw me for a loop, though.
I think they just may be the “mark of the beast”.
I’ll just stick with my google, thank you very much.