Computer time =/= Wasted time

I spend a lot of time, when I can, reading on the computer. I read blogs, look up information, search YouTube for choirs singing music I might want to use. I correspond with other people interested in the television shows, bands, and writers I like, and have made some very strong and I hope lasting connections with people around the world through my varied interests.

Why do people assume that time spent in front of the computer is wasted time? I do read books - when we moved we sold or gave away close to a thousand books, and moved nearly twice that (twice now in a year). I buy books, borrow them from the library, trade them, and give them away. I love books. I want to write them, to edit them, to watch them being birthed.

I also read them online, on the computer, and as soon as it is more readily available and cheaper (any time now in Canada), I will probably read them on a handheld device - my iPod, Blackberry, or an e-reader, so I can carry hundreds of titles at once in my bag. Why do so many people roll their eyes and snicker at the idea of words being so 'demeaned'? A couple of years ago, Norwegian TV put out a hilarious spot called Medieval Helpdesk introducing the 'beek'. It illustrates with humour and grace the constant issue of change - how can one keep up, even get ahead, and not lose the core, the essential nature, of what is being changed?

I love books - the smell of old paper, the feel of leather-bound covers. I think the hand-crafted illuminated books of the early Medieval times are some of the purest forms of art known to Western Civilization. Handmade paper, brightly coloured card stock, rich inks and metallic embossing powder: stationary stores fill me with a sensory glee - I can spend hours in even such a utilitarian place as an Office Depot or Staples.

But it is words I revere - words and ideas, the challenges, the images, the concepts they force into my head. It is words that I remember, that I will keep with me under any circumstance fate may throw at me. Should everything I own be swept away by tide and time, the words I have read - the way they have changed me - the resonance they have set within me - that cannot change. Even in the worst case - brain damage or disease which steals all the words from my head - the effect of those words on how I have lived my life and affected others cannot die. Painted on parchment, incised in sand, typeset in moveable type, or produced in pixels: words will wind their way through authors to readers to auditors to the world in new and fascinating ways as long as there are people with something to say and someone to say it to. Technology - from quill to stylus - is only the medium; the message will continue on.