What concerns me more is not the disappearance of brick and mortar bookstores - even though I loved them for their ambiance - but the disappearance of print media. Although bulky and a bit cumbersome to produce and distribute, the print media have one quality - once they are out, the reader has the full control of the information they entail - all that is required to access is the ability to read. With proprietary electronic media which require access code all the time (cf. Kindle) the access to information can be revoked at any time by whoever controls the code. No book burning is necessary - all they need to do is to change the code.
So the first and most obvious casualty of Kindle is the used book market - once you buy a book, you cannot re-sell it, only the Grand Master of Kindle can do it. I am not saying that this a slippery slope to universal electronic censorship, but then "first they came for the Communists..."
Wojtek
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 11:58 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The future society with no books...is here. The Market is abolishing
> books, not government.
>
> CB
>
>
>
>
> February 17. 2011 10:27AM
> Analysts: Borders may have trouble surviving bankruptcy
> Jaclyn Trop and Melissa Burden / The Detroit News
>
> Borders Group Inc., the once cutting-edge Ann Arbor bookseller that
> built its reputation on being a source for obscure titles before
> helping to popularize book superstores, filed for bankruptcy Wednesday
> after failing to keep up with the times.
>
> The homegrown company revolutionized the industry with a computerized
> inventory system in the 1980s, but ignored rapidly changing reading
> habits in the digital age.
>
> >From The Detroit News:
>
> http://detnews.com/article/20110217/BIZ/102170394/Analysts--Borders-may-have-trouble-surviving-bankruptcy#ixzz1EEhAZci9
>
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>