Proof in the pudding

I was watching Craig Ferguson last night when he was trying to take the audience back in time. To do so, he wanted to refer to a book. He began this exercise in recall with, "For those of you who remember what a book is... " I couldn't believe my ears. Ever since the year 2000 I have been predicting the death of reading and writing. I started a book to that effect, but other endeavors at the time took me away from that effort. I predicted then that a 10-year war would happen from 2007 to 2017 between those who hang on to the past and archaic ways and those who move forward (particularly in education, but in law as well). It's now underway. At the war's end it will be clear what the next phase for recording stories and business transactions will be. The status quo will either be vindicated or decisively buried.

In the year 2008, just one year after the war started, GE announced that they had figured out how to transmit holographic images. They thought it would take 3-5 years to make a device to record and store the images that have been transmitted and then make it commercially feasible. To me that was the verification I needed to substantiate my prediction. 2011 might just see such a device. When this device appears it will be both the death knell and the death nail for reading and writing in the functions we use it for today.

And when people in a society start joking about things that the young people don't know, it is an indication of the beginnings of what is real because what appears in popular language is slightly behind the reality of the event being talked about. I've been waiting for a long time for popular language to start reflecting signs of the reality of the disappearance of reading and writing. Thank you Craig Ferguson for providing the first sign.

And then came the real clincher. In this morning's Midland Reporter Telegram, the editorial cartoon pictured two adolescent boys wearing hooded sweatshirts with smart phones in their hands. The taller boy, still looking at his phone, commented to the shorter boy, "The guy who invented Facebook is Time magazine's Person of the Year." The shorter boy didn't even look up from his phone and replied, "What's a magazine?"

For those who have heard me talk about this matter - I'm just saying...