As I reflect about old timey things that I miss, like... books (:/), it occurs to me this is probably a rather weird position for a star trek fan. Boldly going... into the past! Basically it boils down to I WANT THE TV FUTURE, NOT THIS ONE. In the technology-based TV future young people are interested in science and space exploration. In this future, they use technology for... sexting.

I find watching Star Trek in all its incarnations very relaxing. There's something zen about it to me, probably because it's the future and there's a federation and people are actually trying to get along with each other. Kind of gives me some hope. And I like all the technology, I'm not anti-technology at all. It's just... books. And records. And photographs. There's a realness there that the digital version just can't replace. Technology should enhance humanity, not replace it.

Now I realize books aren't sentient or even living beings and being sad about them isn't logical (yes i'm channeling Vulcans for a moment), but human beings are sentient... mostly (hi fox and friends!)... and I feel that we need things to stimulate our senses. And that's what digital everything takes away from us, the ability to experience things with all of our senses, particularly touch. So god yes, give us medical tricorders and universal translators and warp drives, but leave us books. Because humanity is in what we do and the choices we make and how we treat others, but it's also in how we experience things.

And - this is where the TV Future gets it wrong - this lack of tactile experiences leads us to be desensitized to other people and our surroundings in general. I mean, I see this happening so much already, and it scares me. Just look at... well, pretty much anyone under 25. I'm afraid of a not-so-distant future where no one remembers books or records at all, because everyone who's 25+ now is gone. So I'm here to at least leave a written report that there were once things called books, kids. Maybe it'll catch on one day in the future as "retro."