Borders Bookstore Bites the Dust

[Bella Fortuna]

One of the few remaining large bookstore chains goes belly-up.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/22/378706 ... sales.html

[hadespussercats]

This has been coming for a while, hasn't it?

[Bella Fortuna]

Yes, they've closed a few out this way already. But this is a full-scale liquidation with all locations going now. There are, I think, three near me here that I'll have to visit for bargains...

[laklak]

Bill Gates said, at a conference many years ago, that in the future computers would be your TV, your bookstore, your recipe box, your writing desk, etc. He was right. I love wandering around in the bookstore, but since I bought my Kindle I haven't been once. It's so much easier to browse through Amazon and click "download". There's the book, in 90 seconds. It's astonishingly convenient, unfortunately that convenience comes with a price. Digital media is changing everything. I never watch real-time TV anymore, I just dump it to DVR and watch it later, skipping past the commercials. This is going to radically change commercial TV, once a significant percentage of the population is doing it. Why advertise on TV if your audience is going to fast forward past your expensive advertisement?

[Tyrannical]

Books are anachronistic anyways.

[Gallstones]

Books have a physical existence that digital media does not.
When the power goes off for good, everything digital will be gone.

[Thinking Aloud]

Books have a physical existence that digital media does not.
When the power goes off for good, everything digital will be gone.

I often wonder how future archaeologists and historians will document this period. We're entering an era of no paper records; nothing readable without a particular type of machine; nothing tangible left behind except the structures we build. No books, no documents, no photographs... What will be our "dead sea scrolls"? We're entering a dark age of documentation, because it's all utterly ephemeral. Remember RDF and how important it was to how many people? If all that social vibrancy that was important to so many people can vanish so utterly and so quickly, think about the rest of it...

[hadespussercats]

Books have a physical existence that digital media does not.
When the power goes off for good, everything digital will be gone.

I often wonder how future archaeologists and historians will document this period. We're entering an era of no paper records; nothing readable without a particular type of machine; nothing tangible left behind except the structures we build. No books, no documents, no photographs... What will be our "dead sea scrolls"? We're entering a dark age of documentation, because it's all utterly ephemeral. Remember RDF and how important it was to how many people? If all that social vibrancy that was important to so many people can vanish so utterly and so quickly, think about the rest of it...

Maybe we'll develop new archaeological tools, that can read the detritus of old computers like a palimpsest.

[Gallstones]

Books have a physical existence that digital media does not.
When the power goes off for good, everything digital will be gone.

I often wonder how future archaeologists and historians will document this period. We're entering an era of no paper records; nothing readable without a particular type of machine; nothing tangible left behind except the structures we build. No books, no documents, no photographs... What will be our "dead sea scrolls"? We're entering a dark age of documentation, because it's all utterly ephemeral. Remember RDF and how important it was to how many people? If all that social vibrancy that was important to so many people can vanish so utterly and so quickly, think about the rest of it...

[Tero]

Headed there today, one last book or cd. All my NEW fiction in English will be e books, but I have a pile of mysteries I bought used.

[Bella Fortuna]

Books have a physical existence that digital media does not.
When the power goes off for good, everything digital will be gone.

I often wonder how future archaeologists and historians will document this period. We're entering an era of no paper records; nothing readable without a particular type of machine; nothing tangible left behind except the structures we build. No books, no documents, no photographs... What will be our "dead sea scrolls"? We're entering a dark age of documentation, because it's all utterly ephemeral. Remember RDF and how important it was to how many people? If all that social vibrancy that was important to so many people can vanish so utterly and so quickly, think about the rest of it...

This. It's all too true, and it makes one feel as if we exist in a wasteland of nothingness...

[Tero]

Ok here. Seems mostly 20% off today.

[Ian]

I'm rather pissed about this. I have a Borders near me, but no Barnes & Noble. And I don't expect B&N will come take its place.

[JimC]

They went belly-up in Oz a month or two ago - you yanks are slow!

We had one in the local mall, and it had a great range. There is another bookshop in the mall, but it's a fair bit smaller...

[anna09]

I order mine online at B&N. With the membership, I can get books a lot cheaper than at the store.

I also love used book stores now!