“THE MORE I read, the more I discover my ignorance.” It is a truth that can never be changed. Knowledge has no end, and nobody can boast of having perfect knowledge. Knowledge is sometimes confused with information, but there is some dissimilarity. How I would define the two is – knowledge is what I know, and information is what we know. In another way, it can be said that knowledge is a personal property and information is an asset of the society. Though we cannot imagine a physical form of any one of the two, yet knowledge seems quite dull and information is swift.

 

Perhaps knowledge took birth very soon after the birth of the man. But it was not as portable and transferable in its infant age as it is today. Centuries after Christ, people became more sincere about the preservation of knowledge and the invention of paper helped a lot in this work. But the actual difference and revolution came after the invention of printing press in 1445 in Gutenberg in Germany. Then came the huge libraries and its information system. But this system had its limits. One had to go to a library to get a book.

 

But the incarnation of computer converted knowledge into information in real terms. It made search of books and content easier. Now man could read books from all over the world through Internet sitting in his bedroom without even walking into the library. But these electricity-run big computers were still hurdling our speed. The knowledge was dull but the information wanted to fly in the free sky. Computers looked clumsy.

 

Today’s youth wants everything on their fingertips. And it is possible. Indian market is now being flooded with content on mobile too! Now you can read a complete book on your mobile set. If you are carrying your mobile and have subscribed to one of such products through your service provider, then you are carrying a complete library in your pocket. It doesn’t matter whether you are using Vodaphone, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Idea, Airtel, or Spice. You can read encyclopedia, britannica, etc on your mobile. You can search for a word in any of the dictionaries of Oxford. You can read yoga books of Baba Ramdev on your mobile. There are many companies working in this direction and catering to the needs of end users.

 

One such company, which I know, is Mobifusion. This company has brought some really good books on mobile and you can now read stories from World Book on your mobile. You can picnic at hilltops and still would be in direct touch with your books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, world books, joke books, novels, stories and poems. If such companies are successful in what they are doing, reading a book of your choice will no more require any special efforts. You don’t need becoming a member of a library, going to a bookshop or sitting in your personal libraries for small chunk of information. You can just log on to your service providers’ portal and get the desired information immediately.