Good Old Bill....

I'm sitting here at my old fashioned-style desk in a back street in the old town centre of Tonbridge, listening to Paul Weller's new album (22 Dreams is excellent by the way) having just stopped Victoria Derbyshire from rattling on on Radio 5 Live at the click of a mouse; I've logged onto the admin site for Tonbridge blog and I'm just about to check on a book website whether or not I've got any sales coming in today which could turn around an otherwise slow day in my bookshop, once I've posted this blog that is. I've checked my emails three or four times this morning, I've read bits of the Guardian online and dipped into the Telegraph's electronic version. No interesting Tonbridge books on ebay today or any new listings for the first edition booker prize winners which I'm collecting. What's all this got to do with anything? you may well be thinking. Well even ten years ago I wouldn't have dreamt that any of this would be possible. Ten years ago I think I'd just discovered this new thing called the internet, which everyone was starting to rave about. In the office where I worked at the time otherwise sane people were behaving like boys with new toys, pinging emails around to each other with all kinds of unsavoury video clips attached. It really is incredible how far we've all come in such a short space of time (ok not all for the better.) All of this has been made possible and accessable by one man; or at the very least he paved the way for this brave new world, Bill Gates, who retires from active service for Microsoft today. This is a company he set up, I believe in his garage, after dropping out of college. His is an amazing story and I well remember that most people thought he was some kind of geeky crank when he announced to the world that his intention was to see a PC in every home, and that it was realistic and achieveable in out lifetimes. What a lunatic! I don't know about you but we have a PC, two lap tops, a palm top, to i-pod Touches, Sony Playstation, three Nintendo DS's and they are just the ones I can think of. We must have exceeded even Bill Gates' wildest expectations. Good on yer Bill (I think) and I hope you do manage to put all of those $billions to good use in your new philanthropic projects; and if there is a scheme to help out the ailing book world to bring people back to the printed word then so much the better, you probably owe us mate!...