The Baby and the Bathwater

Traditionally published magazines and newspapers struggle to remain solvent in this new digital age. You'd have to be oblivious not to notice their dwindling numbers, when you're browsing the newstands in Barnes and Noble or Borders. Many of them are going online and that's convenient and inexpensive, but it's a loss for those of us who love the printed page.

Last week I read an interview, online of course, where the interviewee whose name escapes me, cheerfully predicted that traditionally published books will disappear within five years. It seems that there's a stampede on to embrace the new and erase the old.


Many years ago on an old Star Trek episode, Captain James T. Kirk was guiding the Enterprise through its weekly encounter with mayhem and evil. Bones was beside himself, as usual, trying to find the elusive cure for the deadly outbreak that was consuming the crew and several small planetoids. Nowhere in the vast stores of the ships computer systems that held the intelligence of the universe, was the answer to be found. So McCoy traveled to a musty library to search the tomes of the past. And indeed it was in a book that he found the answer.

Science fiction may become science fact. In this case, as with many instruments and technologies on the old Star Trek series, we're seeing life imitate art. Well, it may not have been art, but it sure was a fun series. There are lessons here, I believe. We'll need to read them. Perhaps in a book in a musty library somewhere on a distant planet.

And now, judging by my Dick Tracy wrist radio/television, I must be off to see what others are blogging about today.

Question du Jour: What marvels of the present can you trace to a past tv series?