Borders' closure and the end of the book.

The end of the book, may not be far off. Borders bookstore are closing all remaining 399 stores in America, and are liquidating the company. For those who grew up, browsing the shelves of Borders this may come as a shock – but it is probably only the beginning of the end, for the traditional bookstore and, even, the traditional book.

The closure of Borders will have multiple effects on books and book buying. Firstly, by reducing the number of stores available at which to buy books, it would increase the average distance to a bookstore, for the average American. This makes the buying of books more inconvenient. This will have an obvious effect: American readers (or those that still read, anyway), will seek a more convenient alternative – the ereader, most probably the Kindle, but it could be the Nook (by Barnes and Noble), too, or any of the other ereaders. Thus, instead of travelling further for a bookstore, many former book buyers, may just download their reading material with an ereader. They may become habitual ereaders, once they see its convenience, and may never again return to bookstores, on a regular basis. So, the closure and liquidation of Borders bookstore, is likely to provoke an increase in the rate of exodus from the traditional book, to ebooks.

However, the end of Borders, will relieve pressure on their competitors, to some extent, meaning that it might, for instance, save Barnes and Noble from a similar end, at least for the foreseeable future.

Yet, the long term picture for the traditional book is not a healthy one. Ebook readership is growing fast and looks set to grow faster still. As word of its convenience spreads, so too will the take up of this new medium. The cost basis of traditional publishing is not going to go away – yet the breadth of distribution is in decline. This means that fewer and fewer traditional books, will be able to turn a profit. Thus, publishers will become ever more conservative in whom they publish, greatly restricting the type of book that gets published traditionally. This would mean an even greater focus on big name authors, bestsellers and celebrity “authors” (ghostwritten, usually). This could mean that the traditional book becomes the preserve of those who have no real taste, or whose taste is that which is most common and conventional in the culture. This would alienate, further, those whose tastes run to the more eclectic (once served by bookstores) – again accelerating the flight to ereaders and ebooks.

The end result of this will be that books become a very modest niche in the world’s – or at least America’s - reading culture. Ebooks will dominate and relatively few bookstores will remain. Indeed, it is possible, one day, that there might be no bricks and mortar bookstores – the only ones might be online ones, like Amazon.

Living in Asia, though, I do note the present popularity of books and bookstores here. I rather think that the book might last longer in Asia, than elsewhere, since books are popular, and ereaders are not. Indeed, Kindle doesn’t even work in Asia and Pacific, according to the Amazon website (unless you trick them).

So, in a sort of reverse Gutenberg, we might see the book retreat from the West, with America leading and seek a holdout in the East. Would it not be strange if the twilight of the book, saw its last stronghold, the Orient? What would Johannes Gutenberg have thought of that?

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It is time to uninvent the gun.

It is time to uninvent the gun. No other invention has led to the death of more people than this simple device. If I had the power to remove one thought from the mind of Humanity, it would be the concept of the gun.

Today, a 17 year old teenage gunman opened fire on kids at his former high school, in Winnenden, 20 km north-east of Stuttgart. He managed to kill 15 people, including three teachers, before he was slain by police. This is the worst such shooting in Germany since 2002 when a 19 year old, Robert Steinhaeuser, did something very similar by shooting 12 teachers, two students, a secretary and a police officer before turning the gun on himself. This happened at Gutenberg high school in Erfurt. (Apparently, the young gun club member had been expelled from school for forging a doctor's note: his response was to kill as many people as he could.)

Now, neither of these events would have been possible if the gun had never been invented. Quite simply, a teenage boy with a knife, for instance, no matter how determined he is, is far less deadly than the same boy with a firearm. People can run from a knife, they can't run from a bullet.

The US, of course, is famous for its shootings. In fact, the school shooting is as American as the hamburger: what, in fact, would America be without its school shootings? There is seriousness, in my comedy, sadly - for such events are far too common in America. The reason, of course, is quite obvious: Americans have easy access to guns, so an American with a grudge becomes a school shooter/restaurant rampager/car jacker, all too quickly. What would be a minor altercation in a non gun-owning society, becomes mass murder in a gun owning one.

Singapore recently had its taste of sudden, unexpected violence when David Hartanto Widjaja, allegedly attacked his supervising professor with a knife, then, again allegedly, killed himself. Had David Hartanto Widjaja had access to an automatic weapon the headline might have gone a little bit like this: "Indonesian Chinese boy kills 25 at NTU." Thankfully, access to guns is strictly controlled in Singapore, making such a headline, in Singapore, extremely unlikely. However, I should point out that the David Hartanto Widjaja situation indicates that the ONLY reason Singapore does not have headlines like that, is because the students are not armed. Were Singapore's students as likely to be armed as Americans (or Germans), then, I am sure, that Singapore would have its own long list of school shootings.

The recipe for school shootings is a simple one and Singapore has all the ingredients except one: the guns. All you have to do is put students under tremendous pressure to succeed; make school quite hellish and cold; be just a little inhuman to the student body and keep this up for a decade and a half. Many students, under such conditions, will crack. Those that crack while holding a gun in their hands will take down half their college faculty with them. The only thing saving Singapore from a great shortage of professors is the absence of guns.

The solution, of course, is very simple: take the guns away. Societies that don't have guns, don't have mass shootings. It is terribly obvious. Any society that allows ownership of guns is one that has to accept that the presence of guns will lead to sudden, unexpected large scale violence that can kill many people. Often those people will be schoolchildren.

We can't uninvent the gun, pity though it is. However, we can remove guns from society. It would, I think, be a much better world if every nation on Earth took away the guns. Once the guns are gone, murder rates will fall and every nation will be spared terrible tragedies like the one that unfolded in Germany today.

Many people tend to leap to defend guns, once someone suggests their removal. We have to look, however, at the motives of such people: usually they haven't thought broadly about the situation. All they are thinking is: "I want a gun, to protect myself from the other guy who has a gun." Well, they never seem to consider that nobody having a gun, is better than everybody having a gun. People can't shoot you with their bare hands.

A completely disarmed world, is a much safer world, than a completely armed world. America has shown us what an (almost) completely armed society is like: a stupendous murder rate and mass murders with unrelenting frequency. Societies that traditionally do not have guns, tend also to have relative freedom from murder.

It is time for people to work together to achieve safer societies. All that has to be done is that everyone should agree that there will be no guns. Then take them away. Those that retain them need only be punished with the utmost severity to eliminate guns, entirely, over time.

The alternative, of course, is to invite headlines of the kind we have been speaking of. So choose: no news to report, or sensational headlines - which is it to be?

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