Once upon a time (no it’s alright I promise not to start a fairy tale parody here) I had two walls full of books that I hadn’t read since college, side by side with great art books that I had picked up over the years and felt sure would make great conversation pieces. Next to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tale – yes I’m sure to reread that one day –  stood the complete works of Wordsworth and a dusty over-sized edition of  Raphael’s paintings that I had picked up at the Vatican. I’ve always thought that it was a sin to throw away  books. Who’s to tell when you fancy rereading Machiavelli’s The PRince.    Then there was my record collection that had to make room for my CD collection and my huge sophisticated stereo system that included the overweight black Akai cassette deck, the Sony 5 disk changer, the Sansui amp (there used to be a company of that name) multi disc player and the four massive speakers that were correctly named towers.

Today I have all of this and more in my pocket. My kindle, bless it, can hold a thousand books, every song I’ve ever wanted to hear is installed on my itunes and synced to my Iphone and don’t get me talking about all the apps I have that allow me to measure the amount of beer I drink and find out if it’s raining in Afghanistan (it’s not but thanks for asking). Now  Chaucer , Shakespeare and Philip Marlowe accompany me everywhere and I even have sixteen obscure Indian cookbooks that I swear I will use someday. I  receive digital versions of  The London Times The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Japan Times  and the Mongolian Times every morning and several other papers that I must have subscribed to one night when my Beer App wasn’t working properly. Oh and I have five organizer apps that will ensure that I eventually manage to make the time to actually read a couple of the papers I’ve subscribed to. I am good and truly digitized.  My biggest daily dilemma is choice. On the 20 minute train commute to work do I

a) listen to obscure outtakes from King Crimson’s Court of the Crimson King that are amazingly similar to the original version give or take a cough or two.

b) play scrabble against some other guy who lives in Sydney Australia and whose spelling is even worse than mine

c) read my mail for the fourth time in the last seven minutes in case I actually missed something

d) Surf the web without  a clue what I am looking for.

e) Use the Whatsup? app to send photos of the sneakers worn by the commuter sitting opposite me on the train to an equally bored commuter in Berlin named Bert  whom I’ve never met or actually spoken to but seems nice.

f) Download yet another great app from Itunes that I don’t really need but is free for the next 24 hours and promises to change my life.

g) All of the above (need to get a longer commute)

 

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