Border's Books

Borders is closing and it's all my fault.

I share in that fault though. I'm one of millions of Kindle owners who, joined with Ipad users and the rest, are pulling the publishing world into the digital age whether they want to or not. So no big surprise that Borders is calling it quits.

The truth is though that I LIKE books. I suspect that folks my age and older (47 currently - check back later) and perhaps those from a generation earlier will always have a printed page bias. It's a tactile thing which a computer screen cannot give us. I still remember wanting a home library with shelves and shelves of books. I like the smell. I like handling those old books with brittle pages and wondering who else has read them.

Libraries, though, will soon be a thing of the past. They will become mostly WiFi spots with a few picture books hanging around. The traditional library will become something more like a museum. And so goes progress.

I wonder if those ancient cave painters shook their heads at the stone tablet advocates who, in turn, decried papyrus scrolls as being a short term fad. Soon, I'd imagine, we'll have the words just beamed directly into our noggins so that there's nothing to hold at all. Gonna be a bleak day for bookmarker companies, for sure.