In response to my over-50 peers' dire predictions that the internet will make books with covers and typeset lines obsolete, I chortle back, "but I love the internet.  I love wikipedia. I love Youtube and Flickr and Google." 

They look at me like I'm nuts. 

"But what about newspapers," they say, "and reading and poetry?  What about sitting in an easy chair with a new novel in your hands and a cup of coffee by your side?"

"Books and newspapers don't hyperlink," I respond.  "Nor do they give me access to thousands of libraries.  With search capacity." 

"Here's the thing," I continue.  "I can sit on the couch in my L.A. Spanish stucco house -- built in 1928, at the very beginning of electricity and motorized mobility -- with my Dell computer on my lap, looking up occasionally at the vase of spring flowers on my coffee table, the bird of paradise just beyond my curtained window and the palm trees in the neighbors' yard across the street while I browse the Library of Congress for an article on the history of Islam." 

"And if books with covers become artifacts like 78-rpm records?  I'll have my artifacts here, in the bookcase behind me and on shelves in my office.  Perhaps we'll have public newspaper like we now have public television and radio, for the old folks among us.  No need to worry about someone acquiring monopoly control over the news.  The bloggers will continue to newscast and the ordinary citizen to upload to YouTube scenes of the local police tazering citizens.  And we won't have to cut down any more trees to make the paper on which to hold the words."

Does it get any better than that?

The point of this post?   I am once again burying the lede is favor of the aimless morning ramble before I jump back in to my real work -- the work they pay me to do. 

The point of this post is to ask you to go RIGHT NOW over to wikipedia's entry on mediation and make it better as suggested by John Helie in There Goes That Internet Thingy Again! in mediate.com this month.

Thanks John!