Is the high culture going to just fade to the background?

If people don't come to the literature, then the literature has to come to people. For too long we have been reading these horrifying news about children and youngsters how grow up with computer games and Internet. Their language skills are poor and they don't read too much. Of course computers and game consoles affect in different areas of life, for example crafts, but culture between covers is important to us.

Elder ones in administrative and educational positions consider the Internet as the Monster, which is eating the souls of the hopes of our future. Very few of them actually realizes, that the Monster only needs to be tamed and harnessed. Other cultural items like books can be exciting themselves, but the life around them. Some people, young ones, have high threshold visiting the library and let's face it: they find Internet as better source of information and as better entertainment. Nowadays people hang around shopping malls and in Internet. Their entertainment consists of movies, games and other easy, not much imagination needed, things. The good old books (and new too) just gather dust somewhere, no imagination needed there.

Life around books must be made more fascinating. BookCrossing is fantastic example of this action.

First of all, out of the blue one of these loafers can find book! Book that says "I'm a very special book." This unexpected thing may give a spark in the loafers brain. He/she needs to take this book with him/her, and visit the Internet address on the cover.

The loafer enters in BookCrossing.com, and finds out that this is like good old treasure hunting! And dear God! This book has already been in two countries, and 5 people have told about it on its site! How is that possible... must research this thing more.

Somewhere between the spark and full flame this lucky loafer learns, that there are bookrings around the world, fantastic surprises, theme releases, communication and meet-ups between other bookcrossers, change to get ones art printed to labels, organizing mass releases in happenings etc. These bookworms actually are quite social and cool beings! And the book was nice too, perhaps one should write an entry and release it too, perhaps one of those loafers at the mall. And the loafers mother learns, that he/she no longer sit in front of monitor all the time. His/her teacher learns that this one has improved in language skills. The children actually read!

So, books don't belong into shelves, they belong in hands of people. And if people don't come and claim them, then books must be taken to them. We know this can be done. The two things we can do for these loafers are releasing books and spreading the word. We'll make the literature go to other people too, and one toe of the Monster is going to be tamed.