Rock, plastic, scissors but no paper

This brand new digital age is certainly not for the cynics and the pessimists. With everyone into credit cards and bitcoin mining, even fiat currency in the form of money is coming to end. The bits of paper that our entire lives revolve around (why though, aliens wonder) may soon be doomed to the same fate as every crispy, white, piece of paper that ever made anything up. Everyday is now turning into a paperless day and it does not feel comfortable. 

No longer do we wake up to a hot cup of tea while straightening the day's newspaper. No one squabbles over the cartoon, sport and entertainment sections. A family that used to have their breakfast together and break each other news now find themselves sitting in their own rooms, huddled over their phones or computers while munching on whatever new healthy (read yucky) recipe the missus found on the internet. "Honey, did you hear about the stock market crash in China?," I ask, with trepidation. "That's old news," she says with irritation. "But, it's the headline!," I declare. "Yes, today's headline is yesterday's rubbish in the online world," she replies. Right, indeed. 

Even reading in the parks is a thing of the past these days. "What on earth is that man doing with a processed tree with lines drawn on them," they ask me aloud. "Oh come on! You can at least read the alphabets even if you don't know what a book is," I wish to scream out. Of course, they don't know what books are. They will never know the feeling of thumbing through a brand new hardcover book, with the smell of fresh paper intoxicating as well while your forefinger turns black with the black print which the words are printed from. They will never know the sheer joy of opening a letter from a loved one, having waited to hear from them for months. Nowadays, a simple click sends a mail and the value of good handwriting is forgotten business. 

No manila envelope, no scented paper. Just a bland, uniform looking email with the lines, I miss you. Doesn't pack the same punch. Sure, you could use different colours and fonts to customise your email to add a personal touch but what man knows about colours and fonts anyway? When we wrote letters our poor grammar and extremely bad handwriting made us endearing. Now all we have is block letters and a computer reminding us of how stupid we are by drawing accusatory red lines on every spelling mistake. 

No one passes notes in class and only texts each other instead. In fact, with paper words too have lost their value with people replacing normal text conversations by sending pictures to each other. This entire generation now communicates using memes. Hungry? Send a picture of a cat saying he "haz" cheeseburgers. Feeling funky? Text your SO the hot lips. The world does work in weird ways these days with us regressing back to talking to each other using hieroglyphics. 

But what if you wanted to retain the value of paper? They won't let you. They'll tell you how you are killing the trees. You may retort that using plastic hurts the earth much more. They will then reply with an angry face followed by a few X's and a sad crying face. It gets weird in the world today these days. But then again what can one expect from a paperless world apart from madness? And when the next Y2K happens and the banks lose all the records of all the debt; then there will be real anarchy and they'll know what we were prophesying about. Or maybe such a thing will be the reset button the world really needed. Maybe. Till then, hold onto your books as dearly as you can. Nothing is permanent in the digital world. Paper is the only true face of stability. And if paper goes extinct, what will kids sing about anyway? Bits of plastic lying on the floor? Just doesn't have the same zing to it.