The problem is, I find that the loss of readers has nothing to do with books in general. Regardless of whether books come in paper form or in e-book form, people will lose interest in books in the long run. The reason? We’ve got better forms of entertainment now. We have videos that makes things crystal clear so we don’t have to bother reading books.

There’s a common argument that books and reading expands the imagination. Well if expanding the imagination is what you want, don’t read books. Look at art pieces and plays for better development of your imagination. Books are dead!

For example, Ned presented a bus-stop ad idea which speaks of the amount of bacteria that flies out of someone’s mouth and nose when he/she sneezes. Basically an unsuspecting victim would press a big red button which says ‘press me’ (or something along those lines) and a spritz of water is sprayed onto the victim after the sound of a loud sneeze. A message is then announce saying that a XXX number of bacteria are spread when someone sneezes.

It was a good idea however I felt it wasn’t truly the future of advertising. After all, I visited the discovery centre several years back and they had something like this. Hmmm…

Well anyway, my Dad and I have been crazy over TED ever since I showed him the video about the Indian surgeon (VS Ramachandran I think) and the guy who speaks about gapminder.org (I think its Hans Rosling). I showed Shi Qi the video by Benjamin Zanders, who spoke of passion through music. Shi Qi has always wanted to speak on that topic and I think Benjamin Zanders did it extremely well.

Still though, the technological stuff hasn’t really impressed me much. The fat dude (wiimote hacks) and the video about ‘sixth sense’ was ok but I’ve always expected technology to grow in that sort of way.  Personally I don’t find it that big a deal if someone comes up with a 1 terabyte Ram laptop computer tomorrow since it will happen eventually anyway.

The arts videos have always impressed me as I feel I’m too restricted by the way education is carried out in schools locally. I’ve always wanted to learn more about arts and business etc. but never through schools. I don’t like the way schools teach things. Basically they’ll say that if you want to be creative, you have to think in certain steps etc. Screw that, I don’t like it that way. Being radical and changing everything is what makes the world gasp.

Well, gotta wait for my videocam which I bought from ebay. Ever since Ms Kwa mentioned the creative vado, I’ve been looking out for a good offer. Bought one from overseas and shipped it to Singapore. It’s white with green accents. Cool eh?

The guest lecturer was from Ogilvy and Mather which is basically the granddaddy of all PR firms. They also have the coolest sounding company name.

She went through all sorts of PR tools which I never knew existed. Who would have heard of a Twitter tracker? It’s this web thingy which looks through twitter posts to see who’s been talking about what. Pretty cool since social media is becoming a big deal very fast. I still can’t believe I don’t have a facebook though. All my old friends 50-60+ years old are telling me that facebook is a big deal.

Ms Kwa has been hounding me to start some sort of online presence as well. Hmmm… time to get my butt moving.