IBM has given up the lease on the building where I work. They have five buildings on this campus, and with more and more employees telecommuting, no longer need this space. By July 31, this building will change from IBM occupancy to Raytheon occupancy.
So everyone in this building is busy cleaning, tossing and packing. When someone comes across a manual or book or binder he no longer needs but thinks someone else might have a use for, he takes it to the window ledge in the vending area and leaves it for adoption by someone else.
As I nuke my morning tea or my lunch, I browse the ledge to see what's available. Some are software packages we used around here ten years ago (or more). Some are classic blue binders with the eight-bar IBM logo. Some are textbooks the abandoner used for a class but no longer needs to refer to.
This strikes me as humorous, but I'm not sure why. Only in the last six months have I gotten rid of most of my law textbooks, after carting them around for 15+ years. The thing with both law and computers is that the information quickly goes out of date. The immediacy of information — some very reliable, some less so — has dimmed the necessity of hardcopy books for study and education.
In that same vein, I was very interested to learn this morning that iTunes has surpassed Amazon.com to become the third-largest music retailer, after Wal-Mart and Best Buy. I would love to have a crystal ball and be able to see what popular culture will be like in 25 years.
If you'll excuse me while you ponder that, I'm going to run down to the ledge and see if anyone abandoned an HTML manual. I still like to use highlighters and pens on paper!
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