Every hundred years or so, there comes along a new idea or innovation
that changes life dramatically. The invention of canning made it
possible to store food without spoilage. The advent of the automobile
gave people mobility they never had before. When the telephone came
into being, it suddenly became possible for individuals to stay in
contact with others over great distances and with the invention of
television, the rapid sharing of ideas has become an expected way of
life.
Although Astrology has existed for many thousands of
years, a great deal of astrological knowledge has been lost because of
the lack of preservation methods in early civilizations. Since the
advent of moveable type, and the beginning of the printing age,
Astrology has been recorded more carefully in books so that each new
generation can build on a past it can access.
Even up to as much as a century ago, most Astrology books
were in hardbound, hardcover volumes. While this was a lot easier
than carrying around a carved stone (from the days of the Mayans), it
nevertheless was much too bulky for the student who might want to carry
a few books at a time.
From this, came the advent of paperback astrology books.
For the last half century, most astrological ideas have been passed
down in this manner. Of lighter weight and less bulk than the hardbound
books, these appealed to convenience and practicality.
However, as the Piscean Age came to an end in the late nineteen
hundreds, a seed change began to slowly take place in book publishing.
Many publishing houses found that as more people were being introduced
to the internet, fewer people had the patience to read books,- a rather
sad commentary on the direction of our culture.
As luck would have it, history has a way of bringing
different evolutionary processes together when the time is right for
them to join. The less people had patience to read books, newspapers
and magazines, the more people were creating a need for electronic
media as a replacement. However, for this to happen, several different
and seemingly unrelated technologies had to be ready.
The average book reader would hardly have noticed the tremendously immense technological
advancements in electronic sound recordings that were happening in the
background. With the invention of MP3, now the current standard of
excellent quality of sound recordings made possible by the demands of
computer users, digital sound could be reproduced with startling
accuracy.
While Audio books were starting to come into their own as
tape cassettes during the nineteen nineties, the new MP3 standard,
brings the start of a whole new digital era in sound recordings. Tapes
have a tendency to bend, wobble, stretch with humidity as well as tear
or break. Yet, digital MP3 recordings suffer from none of these
weaknesses. In fact, where tape recordings would lose clarity over
time, the new MP3 digital recordings on computer files, show absolutely
no degradation over at least 25 years per recording. How many books do
you own from twenty five years ago that are in the same condition today
as when you bought them?
What does all this mean for Astrology? For one thing, it
means the methods for recording information so that future generations
can benefit from them keeps improving dramatically. For another, and
maybe this is more important, Astrology is a learning process, and it
has been proven many times over that the spoken word is a better way to
learn than reading words. Try to remember something you read somewhere.
Then try to remember something that somebody said to you. See what
comes to mind faster!
Well ok, that may be true, but it's not so easy carrying
around a desktop to play these files on. True. Yet, here is where
another cooperation from history comes into play. As more people
realize the advantages of MP3 sound, the need to also have portable
ways to hear this sound pushed efforts to invent many new electronic
devices almost simultaneously. Within only the last couple of years or
so, we have gone from one or two MP3 players on the market, to
literally hundreds.
The Ipod from Apple, can play MP3 files that were
downloaded on a regular desktop computer. I have recently seen new MP3
players that work in wristwatches and eyeglasses. They are getting
smaller, more portable and lightweight, yet with no sacrifice of
digital sound quality.
For Astrology, this makes Audio books the perfect
medium. In fact, in this day and age of information technology, Audio
books can be structured into very small files, so that each
Astrological topic (not just chapter) can be on its own file. This
means that for the student, or even the astrologer doing research, the
ability to find the exact place of an idea, refer to a lesson or
something of interest, becomes easier than it has ever been.
Yet, this is only the beginning. Audio books are not only
easier, more portable and more learnable from the point of view of the
student, they have another advantage for the publisher and listener
alike. In the days of paperbound books, if a table, an ephemeris, an
idea or date or chapter had to be updated, it was impossible to do
this, without ordering a reprint of the entire book.
With Audio books, a book could be many files, sometimes
more than a hundred in larger books, yet if something needs to be
updated, edited or corrected, it often only takes repairing the single
file that needs it, to update the entire book. This means
publishers can keep Audio Books more current than they could paperbound
books, and listeners can benefit from this in more ways than I can
imagine in this article. There is no question about it, Astrology Audio
Books are in their infancy and if listeners can learn faster and more
thorough because of this medium, than we can only conclude that
Astrology too will benefit from this vast increase in sharing knowledge.
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Because of these advantages I have recently recorded eight Full
Length MP3 Audio Books for Classic Legend Books. You can listen to
samples of these by following this Audio Books link,
then click on Astrology Books (left side of page) to reach catalog
where Audio Book Excerpt Samples are on every page.
Martin Schulman (founder of Karmic Astrology) is the
published author of over 50 Astrology Best-Sellers in many languages.
You can click this
Karmic Astrology link to find much more about this
fascinating realm of Astrology and the author's recent works, including
new Audio Book versions, more articles, stories and Allegories
published by Classic Legend Books.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
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