Borders is closing Detroit area stores and it's your fault

Hey you! yeah, you...Internet reader! What are you doing?!?  Don't you know you're hurting the economy and lowering property values?!!? Thanks to you (and me), book stores are closing.

You remember book stores, don't you? Y'know that place where, instead of reading electronically illuminated digital representations of ones and zeros, you'd grab a physical object with words in it that actually exists in time and space, peruse it ...and maybe get a coffee while you were there.

Well, thanks to your selfish efficiency and your constant need for instant information, there's going be huge holes in commercial districts.


March 9, The Detroit News

Borders Group Inc is sending more than 100,000 square feet of commercial space back into Metro Detroit's already glutted market, leaving potential holes in four communities where its superstores stand.
The store closings will hurt Dearborn, Ann Arbor and Utica, but the biggest impact will hit Grosse Pointe, where the shuttering of a nearly 18,900-square-foot superstore on Kercheval Avenue will loom large over the commercial district.

Okay, okay that intro might have been over the top, but it's true. Society, and specifically that way information is shared, is going through some big, big changes. Human systems of communication and information exchange wax and wane. From smoke signals, to carrier pigeons, to telegraph lines, to radio waves and now the Internet, modes of human interaction have changed but the impetus remains: humans want to communicate and share knowledge.

The written word has been around since the days of ancient Egyptian and Chinese civilizations. There is something in our tactile nature that makes us want to hold things. And the written word on paper has been one of the few consistent forms of information exchange to survive through to the modern age. However, the sun is setting on those days. Technology is forcing us forward, even if we don't like its immediate impact.

As we continue to progress, (dare I say evolve?) systems of  information exchange will change. One day the Internet will be recalled as fondly by some as the Western Union telegram are remembered by some today.

Unless there's a solar flare that fries the world's electrical system (don't laugh, it happened before) big bookstores will continue to close and holes in commercial districts will be left.

Don't worry, it's nobody's fault, it's everyone's fault.