I like to look at the New Books in the lbrary. Books, writing in online publications, blogs, magazines, zines - there are many sorts of writing going on these days. Much of the time, I find a book on the new book shelf and it seems interesting. I often need about an hour or so to page through a book and decide if I want to spend time on it. If I do think I want to read it, it often takes only a chapter or two before I decide to at least check if the book is available in Kindle format. If it is and the price is good, I buy it in Kindle.
Highlighting with a finger tip and sending the highlight to both Goodreads and Twitter only takes a few seconds. I get to be conscious of how often I am prompted to send a line or two to those services. Files of all the highlights from a given book remain available for pasting on a web page or sending to friends for years after I read the book. An actual Kindle works better as a book to read for me than using an iPad or Samsung Galaxy tablet.
The book Humanimal by Adam Rutherford is such a book. I enjoy books that compare and contrast humans and other animals. I still have the hardback copy from the library and I also have the Kindle book in my Kindle reader. This morning, I began the chapter on "Tools".
The science-fiction writer Douglas Adams came up with three rules concerning our interaction with technology:
1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Rutherford, Adam. Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature's Most Paradoxical Creature—A New Evolutionary History (pp. 21-22). The Experiment. Kindle Edition.
Rutherford explains Socrates' suspicion that new technology called "writing" will ruin human memory, that 16th century churchmen could see that "printing" will ruin religion and asks if there is an important difference between the virtue of reading and evil of video games. It is surprising to me how often I hear people over 70 worrying about the morality, reliability and stamina of younger generations.
