A new boat anchor? but they float.

Old books…. that’s what our encyclopedias are, old. There was a time when things, life, didn’t move so fast. It was a time when publishing companies like World Book would spend big old dollars complying a sets of books that contained all you ever had to know about anything and more. From A to Z it in one of these books. It was a simple matter of opening the right volume and your question about the capital of Ecuador was answered but no more. You just pop in a DVD and the world is within reach in a key stroke.

Times have change and our set of World Books now collect dust. When we purchased them it was for the "benefit" of the kids. "It will help them with their schoolwork." This was the sale pitch we were given at the time. Actually the purchase was to help the poor sales person standing at our front door who needed a quick sale. I mean you just can’t say no to your mother.

Now as I thumb through these reference books I realize just how dated they are. Alaska and Hawaii were territories. Many of us have witnessed the most amazing advances of mankind due to science, communications, and medical achievements over the last five decades.

These dinosaur books were printed in the late fifties and they lack the half-century of history in which current events and advances changed the world. Now the good people are bad and the bad the good. Boundaries and country names have changed. And so has what we perceive to be important. What was once critical to mankind is now lost and the advance in the tech world is mind goggling and a few things disheartening as well.

Yet, here I stand at the beginnings of the new millennia with a DVD in hand that’s packed with twice as much info as a 28 volume encyclopedia set asking a very important question…. "What in the blue blazes are we going to do with 50 pounds of old outdated books?"