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| Anurag Sharma |
- Anurag Sharma
Year 2068: Scientific progress has turned the world into a well-connected global village.
The books were finished at the climax of the digital age with the last book printed in 2043. By then a few books were saved in digital format by some crazy computer-enthusiasts who preserved antiquated technology for sake of nostalgia. But now computers are not around at all. Everything revolves around extremely powerful yet tiny hand-held devices. These powerful devices connect us humans to the information that resides on a central big cloud.
Emergency, like never-before! Nobody imagined the sudden deterioration of the Big Cloud. No one knows exactly what happened to the Big Cloud that was designed as a fail-proof, ultra-reliable system to support entire world. Service crew got struck because the critical information needed for this kind of repair is now inaccessible because Big Cloud is partly unresponsive. All hope is not lost because Johnny Booker is still alive.
Johnny Booker is one of the original creators of the current Big Cloud universal system. He headed the Big Cloud project from the beginning to the completion. In fact, he was the father of the idea that the world needed only one big cloud. Due to his efforts, the United Nations put pressure on all the countries to put all the information of the whole world in a central cloud, which was named Big Cloud.
Following the worldwide success of Big Cloud, Booker was counted among the richest men in the world. But after retirement, he got a little deluded.
Lunatic old man Booker, who remained unmarried, began to speak about the dangers of the Big Cloud. Every event he was invited to, he started talking about going 'back to the book' from the digital world. Slowly, he gathered some people and started a 'back to the book' campaign. In every scientific and technical conference he attended, he delivered speeches on the need to go back to printed books. Initially, people listened but then later it got the label of a fanatic archaic. Due to the launch of the Save Books movement, his identity was established throughout the world as such a conservative old man who had no support except two or four old men like himself. Schools and the industry stopped inviting him since he insisted on the importance of the book over any other form of technological advancement. He tried hard, but his movement, far from growing, slowly started to break down as the aged members were not replaced by anyone new. One day, Booker was left alone in his campaign. For some time his statements appeared on the cloud, then he went into anonymity. There were rumors that using his immense wealth, he had built the world's largest library in a secret place by buying all the books that survived digital revolution.
Lunatic old man Booker, who remained unmarried, began to speak about the dangers of the Big Cloud. Every event he was invited to, he started talking about going 'back to the book' from the digital world. Slowly, he gathered some people and started a 'back to the book' campaign. In every scientific and technical conference he attended, he delivered speeches on the need to go back to printed books. Initially, people listened but then later it got the label of a fanatic archaic. Due to the launch of the Save Books movement, his identity was established throughout the world as such a conservative old man who had no support except two or four old men like himself. Schools and the industry stopped inviting him since he insisted on the importance of the book over any other form of technological advancement. He tried hard, but his movement, far from growing, slowly started to break down as the aged members were not replaced by anyone new. One day, Booker was left alone in his campaign. For some time his statements appeared on the cloud, then he went into anonymity. There were rumors that using his immense wealth, he had built the world's largest library in a secret place by buying all the books that survived digital revolution.
Ray of Hope: All experts believed that Big Cloud could still be saved if Booker could be traced and convinced to provide the printed copies of the technical manuals that were published by his team decades ago.
Although with technological advancement, the location of a dead ant in a forest could be accurately traced, it took the police several days to locate Booker due to Big Cloud related problems.
(Translated from Hindi)
