Why We Need Books… Even More Now in Digital Age

A consultant speaking to the Central Community School Board at a recent meeting discussed school design, libraries, and the need for books. He described books as “clutter”!  Several board members frowned. 

Perhaps many young people growing up today with iPads, iPhones, computers, and other devices might well agree — books are nothing more than musty old relics of another era. Things that take up space needlessly.  Why on earth do we need them?

I have been thinking about that and wanted to write a little piece in defense of books. Who would have thought it was necessary?

We need books for one simple reason: They don’t change! They are the permanent record of what someone wrote.

Do you notice that in the digital world, nothing is permanent? Everything is subject to change all the time. Once it is erased or altered, it’s as though it never existed! How convenient that is for Big Brother, the State, the Tyrant, or Big Tech! But books are forever!

Everyone should watch the movie Fahrenheit 451, the old one from 1966, not the 2018 version.

It opens at a fire station as the firemen get ready to go start a fire, because someone has discovered books, and all books are banned and must be burned! It is the total state where everyone is controlled, TV screens are everywhere, and the message is ever changing. 

But a fireman hides a book and decides to read it! He learns that people are disappearing and each one has memorized a book — word for word. “I am Hamlet? Who are you? Why I am Huckleberry Finn!”

Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns.

Books are far from clutter! They do not change, and we will need them now more than ever!