Books -The Last Chapter Final Part.

I have on my bookshelf an edition of a book which is over 100 years old.It is an edition of an illustrated novel by George Du Maurier the author of Trilby entitled The Martian and is a mystical novel with science fiction overtones.It was published in 1908 and is a handsome book with a dark blue cloth cover embossed with gold leaf.It is perfectly readable and the quality paper it was printed on remains pure white with no yellowing or foxing.It has obviously been well looked after and sat on various book shelves during the past century.During this period as it sat there The First World War happened as did The Russian Revolution,The Great Depression ,The Second World War,The Cold War,The 60s .,men landed on the moon,The Berlin Wall fell,911 occurred. During this time countless books were destroyed sometimes deliberately as in the Nazi book burning sometimes    accidently. This particular book survived and there is no reason why it may not survive for another century if it is looked after.I possess an electronic edition of the same book on my Kindle .The e book edition cost me nothing from Amazon and it is also possible to down load for nothing from Project Gutenberg..However I feel I possess the physical book in a way that I do not with the electronic one.The physical book is also worth something while the electronic one is freeware.James Lovelock one of the worlds leading  scientific prophets has dismissed the whole idea of submitting the sum of human knowledge to cloud computing.He thinks such networks which after all consist of extremely sophisticated complex technology may be all too vulnerable to the breakdown for example of the economic and ecological systems they depend on.I was in London on the day of the terrorist attacks on the 7th of July 2005.One of the first things I noticed happening was that the cell phone network collapsed under the weight of calls and everyone's phones became useless.Combined with the closure of roads and public transport people were essentially returned to 19th century conditions in which they had to walk and ask strangers for news by word of mouth - all in just a few hours.James Lovelock has suggested that basic scientific knowledge should be collected in a sort of primer which would be printed in a solid bound book something like a church bible which could be produced in large numbers and distributed to various educational, military and medical foci .He thinks this is far more likely to survive than an e reader or laptop which without power or its network just becomes a piece of unusable junk.Such devices are also produced in a small number of  industrial centers in Asia ,easily accessible now but in the future who knows ?. Of course people would have to look after the books and know how to read them.I a reminded here of a scene from the George Pal 1960 version Of H G Wells The Time Machine.This has always been a favourite film of mine ever  since I saw it as a child.In the scene Rod Taylor the time traveler is stranded among  the child like Eloi in the distant future.In the film they are depicted like vacant 50s American teenagers who show a total lack of curiosity about anything.Rod Taylor asks them if they have any books and that books will tell him all he needs to know about them.They say they have and take him to some book shelves in a room at the back of their building.When Rod touches the books they simply crumple into dust.Rod tells them ,yes books have told me all about you.