THE SILENCE OF A GIANT
What was the blame for the recent closing of so many Borders book stores? The speculation that surrounds it is interesting. Years ago when digital media was making a huge headway there was a lot of talk about digital books, (back then they were called Titles) and companies like Voyager Media were just coming up and around. Borders Books actually had a section for this new type of media. This little tech wave occured right before the web so many of you may not remember this.... it was very short lived.
I had hopes that this type of thing would make a comeback. There was a lot of great visual titles like, The Residents, "Freakshow", and Laurie Andersons, "Puppet Motel". I wanted to see more of this type of media come out. Thanks to the web I guess this request has been answered but to me it is not the same. With the coming of the new Kindle Readers I had no idea that this type of media would bring a crushing blow to physical reading material. I never thought it would crush a giant book store chain like Borders.
I wanted at least a few of these stores to remain open because they have an aweseome collection. But as of this week all of the remaining stores are to close.
IS DIGITAL MEDIA KILLING OUR CURRENT CULTURE?
I still miss Tower Records. Even though Itunes has replaced it for the most part I still miss going to a record store just to look around. I don't miss the snappy young twerps at the counter who thought THEY were rock stars. I never championed the culture that surrounded record retail. I also never thought that the digital market would completely crush the record giant - Tower.
I am going to miss some of the newspapers too out there such as The Ann Arbor News, and some defunct magazines.
Are we to become the new publishers?
Posted Sunday June 24, 2011
