Dear J-
We actually didn’t finish Chitty Chitty Bang Bang until today, but we’ve been humming songs from it since. And it turns out that the belt I’d bought yesterday was too long, so it’s almost like I got to do yesterday over again (note to belt vendors: what happened to plain strips of leather, nicely finished on the edges, roughly an inch to an inch and a half wide?). The excitement of Friday is lost in the foreshadowing of the work week writ large on Sunday afternoon.
I wonder about the paucity of digital distribution solutions; I understand that it’s important to keep track of copyright and provide proper credit, but doesn’t it seem that the minor amount of potential theft would be outweighed by the benefits of not having to provide physical storage and supply. For some industries — music — digital distribution is an accepted norm; for others — movies — folks are still buying and renting DVDs instead of sending bits around (there’s a seedy air about torrents, no pun intended); and for still others — books — digital adherents are looked upon as heretical, despite being perfect candidates (relatively small amounts of data). After all, all those physical artifacts end up cluttering the house when you’re done with them (we’re not going to talk about the box of DVDs that were watched only once).
There is, after all, a lot of important information out there to be digested; life works and whole careers continue to come on market and impact other lives. Was it Newton or Galileo who said that they saw further because they had stood on the shoulders of giants? The easier it is to know, the more we will know.
Mike
Tags: books, digital distribution, knowledge, movies, music
