Describing Paper to Future Generations Analyzation
Bloggers and journalists in the book industry are making a big to-do lately about virtual books, pdf, Kindle, etc. There seem to be two schools of thought: either paper books will one day be as extinct as clay tables, or readers will never be entirely comfortable with giving up actual, physical pages and ink for words. Though I desperately wish the latter is true, I believe our future children will experience words only through light and pixels (You can read a fun little poem of mine about future children, the environment, and the planet on the main Poetry page).
This became the reason for Describing Paper. One day a teacher in some future classroom is going to have to explain to her students what paper books were, much as we have explained to our children about washing boards, outhouses, bows and arrows, and wineskins. I tried to imagine their reactions, and how someone might explain paper to another person who had never encountered it before. Ultimately I ended on a note that surprised myself, confronting what a lot of us fail to really think about: Each piece of paper I touch comes from a living tree.
