Text 1: The books that went round the back, by Eleanor Price

An original contemporary newspaper feature.

When the council library installed its new book-sorting machine, the notice promised that returns would be dealt with “in seconds”. The machine occupies the space where the returns trolley used to stand: a long grey belt, a glass-sided cabinet and a row of bins labelled by subject. I watched the first book disappear through the slot and heard it clatter somewhere beyond the wall.

Mr Evans, who has volunteered here since the library opened, said the machine would take the pleasure out of browsing. “A book should be handled by a person,” he told me, holding a paperback as if it needed protecting. On the first morning, three readers put their books on the belt without checking the screen. The machine rejected them all. It was a small queue, but it looked like a verdict.

By lunchtime, the queue had gone. A girl who had been waiting with a pile of books dropped them in one by one, watched the green tick appear, and ran off to catch her bus. The librarian, Nisha, said the system had processed 186 returns that morning. She had spent the time helping a man find large-print books and showing a child where the atlas shelf had moved.

Mr Evans still insists that he will not use the machine. He would rather hand his books to someone who knows him. But last Thursday, when the library was short-staffed, he showed two visitors how to use the screen. “It’s not the same as a conversation,” he said afterwards. Then he put his own books through the slot.

The machine has made the library quicker, but not quieter. Every few minutes it gives a brisk mechanical cough as a book lands in a bin. I miss the old trolley’s squeaky wheel. I do not miss the queue.

Text 2: A brighter walk home, by Arthur Bell

An original newspaper column written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

The new electric lamps were lit along Market Street on Monday evening, and half the town appeared to have come out to inspect them. Mr Pritchard, who has tended the gas lamps for twenty years, stood with his ladder under one of the posts and watched the light come on without his assistance. He said the lamps were a fine invention for those who did not have to mend them.

Several shopkeepers had expected the glare to drive customers away. Instead, people lingered outside the windows, reading labels they had previously passed in the dark. Mrs Lloyd, who keeps the bakery, said she sold more buns after six o’clock than on any Monday in memory. She also complained that the bright light showed the dust on her shelves. Her assistant took a cloth to them before the evening was out.

Not everyone was pleased. Mr Pritchard fears the council will soon have no need of his ladder, and one resident says the lamps make the street feel like a factory yard. Yet I walked home beneath them after the meeting and could see the uneven stones before my feet reached them. The old gas lamps had left whole stretches of the pavement in shadow.

On Tuesday, I saw Mr Pritchard carrying his ladder towards the far end of the street. He was not going to mend a lamp. He had been asked to help the electrician reach a loose wire. “There is still work for a man who knows the streets,” he said, though he did not look entirely convinced.

The council calls the new lamps progress. I am less certain that a brighter street is always a better one. But I reached my door without stumbling, and that is a modest improvement I cannot deny.

Compare what the writers suggest about people’s reactions to new technology and how those reactions change. In your answer, analyse how the writers present these reactions and evaluate which writer makes the change in attitude more convincing. Use the texts to support your answer and make it clear which text you are referring to.