Moving forward in a pointless direction

And so it has started. The inevitable drive forward into the realms of technology. Our household is a haven for all manner of technological blunders, we are the people who thought HD DVD would better Blu-Ray, We owned a mini disc player/recorder, I think somewhere in the distant past there was even a lazer disc player (once more kids ask your parents or even grandparents they will know).

My wife is without a doubt a gadget freak, when women drawl all over pictures of Johnny Depp in speedo's on a French Beach my wife drawls slack jawed over the magazine 'Stuff'. If its new, it has a mains adapter and it does something with files she can transfer from her smart phone then she needs it, please note needs not wants.

and so as sure as CD killed vinyl, as sure as MP3 is killing CD & as sure as our electric bill will be higher this month the national debt of a third world nation the EBook has invaded. Pah to all that words printed on bits of paper says she who is sponsored by Duracell. No way is the 2000 year old tried and tested method of relaying information good enough in 2009 we need an ebook reader. For those uninitiated with the revolution an ebook is a computer file of a normal book & an ebook reader is a handheld device about the size of your average paperback with which to view said ebook. Sony's latest holds about 180 books & it claims you can read war and peace 7 times on one battery charge. Although why you would want to read war and peace more than once is alien to me.

So we are going to the digital age of books, no more dusty shelves in musty book shops for us, no more the enjoyment of opening a crisp new copy of something and falling into the romance of actual pages in your hands, no more feeling part of the story with the turn of each leaf and no more the sentimental return to a copy of an old favorite who's spine hangs on amidst a copious amount of sellotape... and she calls this progress???

Worse than all this is my wife's display of pure logic... she has downloaded from the Internet a complete collection of books which we already own, in ebook format, she has compressed and changed the file format all in eager anticipation of owning a device which at this stage doesn't even have a release date, a device she has never seen & yet is already sold whole hearted on.... i think i will go grab that dog eared copy of war and peace and see if my battery lasts long enough to get through it seven times or if i will suffer terminal failure on attempt 4.