The price of online convenience is all the destruction it’s caused

Our society is losing numerous things in the digital age, for better and worse

I miss the pleasure of strolling through book, record and other stores I’ve helped kill with my online habits.

I even miss Blockbuster, where our family would wander the aisles for 75 minutes debating which three of the store’s 13 million movies we could agree on. As we did, strangers gave advice, from parents suggesting children’s films to spike-haired punks enthused about the latest Armageddon sci-fi. By the time we’d finished searching, there often wasn’t time to watch a film, but we’d had a lively night out.

Nowadays, I just browse through Netflix alone on my couch. It’s way easier to scroll instead of stroll, but less social. I’ve chosen convenience over conviviality.

There are other things we’ve lost to the Net in recent years, for better and worse — with my help. Among them:

Bookstores are an ever-shrinking species because so many people are downloading e-books, like I do. I like the bigger type, the backlight and having 1,000 books wherever I travel, with new ones available online.

But I miss the bookstores I’m killing. I also miss knowing what I’m reading — because my Kindle opens right to the page I was last on, so I never see the cover. People ask what I’m reading these days and I murmur: “A great Japanese novel ... but I can’t remember the name ... or the author’s.”

They used to say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but at least it had one.

Road maps once spilled out of our car doors, but now they’ve vanished, replaced by Google Maps and other map apps.

I don’t miss those ragged paper maps that unfolded halfway across your car, before your spouse said: “This is the map for southwestern Vermont — it doesn’t have Montpelier. We need the one for northeastern Vermont that’s in the driver’s door ... or the passenger door ... or maybe the glove compartment.”

Then you had to refold it for five minutes and unfold two more — and you still got lost.

Today, your phone’s GPS is a directional dictator that barks out every turn so tyrannically, you barely know how you got wherever it is you are.

Remembering phone numbers was once a much-valued skill. I still have a mental Rolodex of old ones in my brain for my best friends in Grade 9. But today’s 20-somethings are as likely to remember their friends’ phone numbers as their shoe size. They don’t even know their own phone number, because it’s in their phone.

Blind dates: In days of yore, these were a mysterious, anxious leap in the dark where all you knew was that your mother’s hairdresser’s sister had said: “Joni is such a beautiful, wonderful person — you’ll love her!” But for all you knew, she could be a sadistic prison guard.

Today, you arrive for your online dates after 90 minutes of Googling them. You’ve seen enough information and photos to write their biography — in fact, you know more about their lives than you do your mother’s.

Instead of a blind date, it’s the last step in a background check.

Calculators have vanished, incorporated into our phones, along with flashlights, cameras, watches, calendars, address books — and bill-splitting apps.

It won’t be long before wallets vanish into our phones, too, along with our money, passports, loyalty cards, driver’s licences — and our brains.

Spelling: Studies show spelling and grammar mistakes are rising fast, but is that our fault, or auto miscorrect’s?

“Sorry Miss, but spellcheck rewrote my homework.” Besides, what’s proper spelling and grammar anymore in the era of OMG, BTW and CU 2moro? The latest punctuation mark under attack is the period, according to The Washington Post, which just reported “Do. Not. Use. Periods.”

It seems many texters now press the space bar, adding a new line, instead of a period.

You just finish one sentence Then you start another sentence It won’t be long before the comma and the question mark die online too and we all write like illiterate poets Period