Bookworm

Trey Smith

Books allow people to think for themselves, allow access to knowledge forgotten or even out of favor with the times. Books allow knowledge to travel over time and distances greater than the author could ever accomplish in person. Most important, books encourage allegiance not to kings, but to the learning of the individual.
~ from Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony by Deng Ming-Dao ~

I love books. I like the way they feel. I like the pages, whether they be new and crisp or old and dog-eared.

Books are strewn around my bedroom. Some are in a bookshelf. Some are in small piles. Some sit right next to my bed, waiting to be read or leafed through at a moment's notice.

Though I read loads on the web and even have downloaded an ebook or two, I don't necessarily trust this move to put so much of our reading material in electronic form. By storing so much information on web servers, it makes it too easy for a government to decide to limit access to what you or I want to learn.

Yes, books can be banned or gathered up to burn, but it's next too impossible to collect every book. They are a lot easier to hide!

Imagine if the government one day decides that reading this blog will corrupt your mind (which, by the way, is foregone conclusion). Some bureaucrat will contact Google and, in a matter of seconds, this blog will vanish into thin air. All the words we've written over the years will disappear into the ether.

Now imagine that ALL blogs and websites of a certain perspective -- for example, ANY site that makes reference to Taoism/Daoism, Liberation Theology or Global Warming -- is shut down.

Would the world be a better place?