accessible to the public.
Being illiterate or only reading at the level of a fourth grader has no stigma anymore especially if you know how to do math; the universal language.
Nearly every physical library disappeared during The Plague. They were all looted or destroyed in the chaos of that time period. Virtual libraries however remained predominantly unaffected. Rather than wasting time and precious resources rebuilding to accommodate an obsolete institution it was decided to bolster and support existing electronic repositories instead.
Digital libraries today mainly contain user manuals, textbooks, historical documentaries and instructional videos that teach viewers how to do anything from sewing a dress and fixing a car to preparing a certain kind of meal. Reading complex material today is mainly for religious and government leaders or maybe high level corporate business leaders; whom many are also religious and/or government leaders.
What I forgot to mention earlier was that along with humans The Plague also affected most trees, causing individual trees to dry up and die a few weeks after being exposed. Experts assumed that infected humans carried and transmitted the fatal bacteria to trees when the two came in contact.
Trees in very remote locations where people didn’t live were not affected. The Plague stopped killing trees about the same time it stopped affecting humans, making it easier to replant them.
There are many major efforts going on right now to reforest Earth; thanks to the Norwegian Svalbard Global Seed Vault and another storage facility in Antarctica. However, it will take hundreds of years to fix the damage done, especially to the atmosphere.
To discourage everyone from harming trees, all paper and wood products were confiscated and have been forbidden for all but religious purposes. Everything manufactured today for people to use is predominantly made of plastic, metal and ceramic materials.
Modern Society had no choice but to be paperless and anyone caught with and/or using anything made with paper or wood is duly punished (usually a hefty fine but in some cases hard labor or jail time).
The law though is pretty much obsolete in my eyes because just about everything that was made out of paper or wood was stolen, sold or burned for heat during The Plague. The only remaining books or wooden items I’ve ever seen were either in museums or a church.
Paperless Society
I live in a world where everyone is dependent on their smart phones and tablet computers for access to just about all information that isn’t easily memorized.
We are being dumbed down by technology. Almost no one reads above a fifth or sixth grade level anymore because you don’t have too. Reading isn’t necessary anymore. Why read a recipe for cooking when I can find a video that will show me the same thing. The same goes for lessons in school. Watching a movie on The Civil War is more interesting than reading about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t give up my tablet computer for the world, it’s like an extension of my brain but there is also something to say about reading from bounded paper materials.
There is definitely a difference between reading a traditionally printed newspaper or magazine and its electronic version. Physically turning the pages of a book and having to figure out the meaning of a word through its context in a sentence rather than just looking it up in an online dictionary is a unique experience for me that is hard to explain to someone else until they have tried it themselves.
Paperless systems have also made it a lot easier for officials to track and control what people access.
There are lots of government, religious and private sponsored internet web sites for downloading material.
Everything a person reads, writes and saves is stored remotely and monitored daily by security officials or automated computer programs, thus discouraging individuals from propagating inappropriate material.
Paper based printed material offers its reader a form or privacy that does not exist on a tablet computer. Government people can’t monitor your memories and thoughts. I can read a paper manuscript then destroy all physical trace of it but still enjoy remembering it, it’s not that easy to do the same with a tablet connected to the Internet.
Possession of any book (versus a text) is considered a criminal offence in the lines of being caught with narcotics.
Children’s literature, ancient philosophy and mythology type texts are now the responsibility of spiritual leaders associated with The Four Recognized Religions.
Albeit some classic works like all of Shakespeare’s plays are still easily found and legal because of their historical and universal nature. They are considered historical representations of the past, not pleasure reading.
No one in their right mind reads narratives like The Iliad for fun, even in the past, because they promote treating women like property and glorify violence. Ancient texts provide tangible lessons(descriptions) about how people used to behave and what it was like to live in a particular society, nothing more.
Religious writings by Saint Augustine, C.S. Lewis and Thich Nhat Hnah, along with sacred books such as The Bhagavad Gita, The Koran and Aesop’s Fables are readily available on most religious sites.
Biographies of famous people like George Washington, Bill Gates and Cesar Millan can be purchased on Applzon.com. Math, science and vocational education textbooks are easily found in most school repositories. User manuals for most IBM, Microsoft and Samsung products are also relatively easy to acquire electronically.
Lately, non-religious poetry, essays, memoirs and autobiographies have been losing popularity and are becoming difficult to come by. Those writing styles are perceived as a form of vanity or ‘navel gazing’ by ordinary citizens. Businesses see no value in creating, keeping or distributing those kinds of books anymore.
The masses are gradually forgetting how to read and write above grammar school levels. Big chunks of Past Society’s collective memory are being forgotten.
In time I’m pretty sure most people will think Plato is just a colorful modeling clay that children learn to use in elementary school before being introduced to ceramics when they are a little older, versus a famous Greek Philosopher. Utopia will become a word that refers to a fictitious place with a negative connotation like Hell, not a book written by Thomas More. The average person will believe that The Hunger Games or The City of Bones are just vague references to something that happened during The Plague, instead of two popular book series. As older people die off, the more this kind of information becomes lost because there’s no one around to remember.
Colonies on Mars and the Moon
The Plague killed people and trees but it did not stop progress. It only slowed it down a little.
New kinds of technologies continued to be developed between 2017 and 2035 that helped improve space travel and off-planet settlements. The basic premises of Moore’s Law remained in effect.
The Internet expanded into outer space for the benefit of people living on off-Earth Colonies and space stations. The first second generation colonists were born on the Moon and Mars, gradually increasing those populations from within. It became possible to grow plants native to Earth in other places.
Internet services amongst Earth and its Colonies have become for the most part negligible compared to what it was in the beginning. It used to take a long time for data to travel back and forth but now speed is no different here than it was back on Earth.
I’m allotted ten gigabytes of data each month and almost never come close to using it all. My co-workers however are always texting, sending pictures and talking on video-phones to their friends and families on Earth and at both Colonies.
The variety of things we are able to buy, legally (and illegally), is slowly expanding.
Better food and clothing are at the top of nearly everyone’s wish list here. Amazon.com was recently given permission to start shipping authorized items to colonists. As soon as I can afford it I plan on buying myself some
fancy fabric from the website so that I can hand sew myself a few nice scrub tops for work.
It’s too expensive at this time to send people back to Earth. Currently, Colonies are a one way trip for settlers who volunteer to come here. Only military flights are authorized for round trips and they are far and few in-between
Communicating regularly with family and friends is usually not a problem, but until business and industry becomes more established within off-Earth colonies, which is estimated to not happen for at least another twenty-five years or so, all colonists are basically on their own once they reach their final destinations.
There are about three thousand immigrants presently living on the moon and four thousand five hundred on Mars. The number on Mars is expected to increase to a little over forty eight hundred within the next six months because there are two colony transport ships currently en-route that have not yet arrived.
Right now there are no plans to build additional facilities on The Moon, despite having so many residents. The Moon Colony is a huge telecommunication’s compound and just about everyone there works for AT&T, Verizon or the ISA, International Security Agency. Everyone else is considered support staff (the people responsible for repairing/keeping things running, ice harvesting and hydropod-farming).
Leaders are in the process of deciding if