It has been said that the measure of a civilization is by how many libraries it has.

This comment may lead to many points of departure for discussions. But here, we must reflect that the height, the apex, the flower of our civilization in this regard was the advent of the bookmobile.

Our glance at the Daily Townsman archives, 35 years ago to the week, tells us that “new to the Kootenays is a bookmobile service,” to service 45 communities carrying 2,000 hardcover books and 500 paperback books.

Here is what medieval monks dreamed of in apocalyptic visions as they laboured over their copy desks. Like an old-fashioned ice cream truck, the bookmobile brings literacy to the masses, kids running behind it down the street, waving their library cards.

Oh, Bookmobile, how you civilized us throughout the last years of the 20th century. But Bookmobile, your days are numbered. Kindle is coming. Kindle is here.

We can now download our books via the internet, store thousands of them on a small handheld device, and read them with surprising ease (surprising because reading from a device like a Kindle is hardly different than reading from paper - not like reading from a computer at all).

Soon these devices will be cheap enough that even those on fixed incomes, or with little money at all, can afford them. And the downloading process will so improve in simplicity and affordability that anyone — someone with mobility issues who is technologically challenged, for example — can utilize it. Inexpensive digital readers are coming to everyone.

The communications revolution continues. Farewell, Bookmobile. Thanks for the memories.

Editor’s note: The editor became convinced of the value and inevitability of the Kindle while eating spaghetti and trying to read “Anna Karenina” at the same time. Oh for a Kindle, he sighed, for a device he has never used.