It's not often that we get such a clear premonition of the end times (or maybe just a call to readjust rationality and expectations), but I think that the sight of 50 Waymos circling in a Colorado cul-de-sac might qualify. Almost as creepy as turkeys circling a dead cat.

Blame Gary Larson.

We were getting our daily dose of The Far Side when we bumped into a very funny Lassie reference (fifth cartoon), which prompted the question, Did Timmy Ever Actually Fall Down a Well on Lassie??

Off to the internet. I only had to type in three words before a source for the answer popped up (popculturereferences.com).

No. In fact, the only creature that fell down a well was Lassie him/herself.

'Trust everybody but cut the cards.'

It seems like a while since we've heard from it, but the Wall Street Journal pops up again, with one of their scolding-nanny pieces (with tortured word play) entitled Too big to spell? Global elite give up on grammar. Main takeaway: various proofreading, spelling and grammatical errors are creeping into public missives released by big timers. The Journal is nice enough to provide a few examples, which include missing spaces, transposed letters, and capitalization goofs.

Well, I'm with the targets on this one. Yes, they make mistakes. We all do. Just in the hundred or so words already in this piece, I had a dropped space or two, transposed letters, two uncapitalized start of sentences, and something the computer claimed was a grammatical error (but wasn't).

My problem, in most basic terms, is: I'm a good speller but a lousy typist. If I have to type the word 'because,' eight times out of ten I'll see 'beca-sue' (without the hyphen, since the computer automatically corrects because for me so I have to put the hyphen in). But the computer giveth and the computer screws up. And, dear computer, I don't need help screwing up.

In fact, I know exactly why those mistakes are appearing. I am typing this on a tablet, using the screen keyboard. The keyboard has little to no respect for the space bar, the shift key and other non-printing characters. I can press the space bar, but the tablet may not recognize it. Or, sometimes 'b' or 'n' intercepts the tap destined for the space bar, and so I have enjambment wrapped around the b or n. Some transposed letters can be attributed to a lack of tactile response.

There are some other 'mistakes' that can be explained. Forgiven, maybe not. To wit:

Personal history.: Lots of these 'mistakes' come out of technology land. I'd be willing to bet that mr. lower case started as a programmer, where everything is traditionally lowercase. You carry that over to the real world.; Also, wouldn't it freak folk out if a guy who normally types all lowercase suddenly, for this one important memo, started Typing in Sentence Case?
Someone's got my back.: Back in the 'good ol' days,' when career choices were limited to farmer, soldier, and middle management, there were people called first 'secretaries' and later 'executive assistants.' Their jobs were to type things and get coffee for 'the boss class,' who were too busy drinking coffee and then three martinis with lunch to do tasks like typing. After the advent of the personal computer, the boss class was expected to do its own typing and composing, while the secretaries were 'reassigned.' The computer promised to do everything a secretary did (except get coffee) and it did, except badly, and gets progressively worse. Use without proofreading after spell-checking at your own peril, especially if A.S. is involved.
Superman/Excelsior/You know what I meant/Don't sweat the small stuff.: Some folk are like gods, and make no mistakes, while others are hard-charging, forward-thinking kinds of folk, who have more important things to do than review what they've already done. Besides, English is a very forgiving language. Did you know that if you cover the bottom half of the letters in a sentence, most people still know what it says? And look at TikTok! Sheer chaos. It's the message that's important, not the container. Etc., etc.

Bonus!

Quiet world changers.

You probably don't recognize the names Fredrich Gottlieb Keller, Charles Fenerty, nor of the German industrialist Heinrich Voelter or Johann Voith.

But if you were born in the 20^th Century, they shaped your world. It's a world that seems to be going away. My world.

You see, Keller and Fenerty invented wood pulp paper around 1844, working independently (which regulars will recognize as one of my pet fascinations). Voelter was responsible for taking Keller's process and industrializing it, and he and Voith developed processes to make pulp paper in large quantities.

This is all very nice, and was useful in publishing in the later 1800s, but it wasn't until the 1880s that Ottmar Mergenthaler (another name you've probably never heard of), invented the linotype machine.

What happened then was the birth and growth of universal literacy. Education in the United States and other western nations was not only being democratized, but mandated for people of all classes and occupations. Everyone had to go to school to learn readin', writin', and 'rithmatic. All these people needed something to read, and the combination of vast quantities of cheap paper and a speedy printing process made mass-market newspapers, books, textbooks and magazines possible.

At the same time, people were having houses wired for electricity, which expanded the hours when one could read far beyond the limitations imposed by natural light.

This ushers in not only a tighter connecting of the world (everything that happened in the world yesterday shows up on your doorstep this morning), an explosion of writing generally and the Golden Age of the Short Story in the 30s in particular. Every newspaper worth its salt (or presses) ran at least one best-seller list.

Other new printed creations filled our stores and lives. Where books had once been rare, and almost revered, the new literacy meant that everyday households had other books join the family Bible. Andrew Carnegie funded the building of free libraries open to the public across the United States. Kids toted textbooks back and forth to school (although to be fair, this was already happening even in the 1850s).

There were other signs of the growth of the popularity of reading. At the upper end, universities teamed up with publishers to develop series of leatherbound collections of great literature which were hawked door-to-door like encyclopedias, brooms, vacuum cleaners and fruit. Having one was a sign of culture and education. At the bottom end, dime novels, penny dreadfuls, and pulp fiction provided cheap, disposable reading material for all ages (as exemplified by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and Harlequin romances, to name just two.

Life, and technology 'moves forward.' Other entertainment mediums begin to nibble away at print, particularly TV, which provide news reports more quickly than newspapers, and stories/entertainment more easily and cheaply than books (and often worth every penny of the free price [they still had pennies then]). Life and technology moved forward, with the development of the micro (personal) computer and later of the internet, both of which made information and entertainment more accessible, and had the unintended effect of lessening the power of gatekeepers.

And so here we are, at a point where we are seeing if not the death of books and reading, at least a steepish decline. Only 70% of 'books' are printed anymore, the rest being consumed as audiobooks and e-books. A percentage like this does not account for declines in overall numbers. A best, these are signs or indicators, maybe even portents. Publishers are ceasing publication of mass-market paperbacks. Newspapers (remember newspapers?) are eliminating book review sections. It used to be I was surprised when I went in a house with no visible reading material. Now, it's routine. I don't know if it's a sign that home decorating shows hide the covers and spines of books, or if they're just going for that 'textured paperwhite' look.

So, are we really changing, entering a new age of bread and circuses, or am I just doing my best Chicken Little imitation? It will be painful in the transition, where we will have to learn which information sources to distrust, but we will weather it.

So—insignificant blip, sea change, or a return to a status quo of most of human history, as Joel J Miller points out: mass literacy hasn’t really been a thing for most of history. I think it’ll be an outlier, a phenomenon of the twentieth century.

I don't think I'll have to worry about the book disappearing in my lifetime, or reading. I do worry a little about the invasion of multitasking. It is very, very easy to immerse yourself in a good book, to look up from the pages and realize it's waaay past your bedtime. But different mediums, including e-books, are much more susceptible to distraction.

It's unfortunately very easy to get distracted (i.e., multitask) by a text or email when reading an e-book, or have an audiobook or podcast playing as an accessory to another task (say, driving). But even this is within your power. as Jeff Goins points out in Are Audiobooks the Future of Publishing?, saying I would argue, learn to love your chores. Do them for the sake of doing them, not as something you need to be distracted from. When you read, read. When you vacuum, vacuum. When you work, work.
Do everything with as much intention as possible.

Ultimately, we will live life as we live life, subject to the same pressures as we have now to conform and live a good life, an excellent life. Will books be a part of that? I don't know, but I know they will continue to be a part of my life. And for that, I give another shout out to Herren Keller, Voelter, Voith, and Mergenthaler for the work they did creating my world.

Blame Gary Larson.

'Trust everybody but cut the cards.'

Random observation.

National heritage.

Bonus!