Redundancy

Redundancy.


The word brings images of bankers filing out of big office buildings, with suitcase and a box of personal belongings at the end of 2008. The collapse of Lehman Bros. was big news, and many companies fell, or balanced on the wire with one foot, with them. The Global Financial Crises aka GFC was born, with acronym and doom.

Newspapers spouted updates on the demise, documentig the hoards of people put out of work. Everyone read it in the paper, and then knew someone who knew someone that had been laid off. Soon, it was your friend, your family. Closer still your lover or your husband. Sometimes, it was yourself.

The economist blamed bad debt. Blue-collared-workers and out-of-work-ers blamed greed. Some blamed technology. One suspects, it was a combination of all three.

Technology.

It has also been the instigator of another form of redundancy. The printed word. The book. The newspaper. The Trading Post. The Street Directory. Many newspapers have gone out of business in the USA, some also in Australia. The Trading Post, the icon of Australian second hand selling/ buying/ bargain hunting is now online only. The UBD has been sold off. The Book, now available for free downloading, where out of copyright, you buy book readers instead of books, or iPhones, or iTouches...

As a library worker, and long time lover of the written word, the book shall be missed. Instead of getting dog ears, and bent spines, the worst fear of the reader will be an incomplete download, or file corruption. You will no longer lose books, but can just copy for friends or refer them to the original free download page. Reading in the dark after bedtime just became easier for teenagers under their covers, without fear of being caught, or running out of torch battery.
Technology has brought many wonderful, amazing (stupid) ideas to our world and everyday life. The calculator enables us to not have to use our brain, the computer enables us to not have to write. Lights limit house fires. Telephones mean long distance relationships and 24/7 contact with loved ones.

It makes one wonder if in twenty years times someone will watch The Castle and wonder at the hard copy Trading Post the same way we view the telegraph, or the horse-drawn carriages in movies from the early twentieth century. If a person sitting snugly on a couch reading a book will take a few minutes for the audience to work out "Ah, that must be a book, I wonder how they ever got by back then..."