Ebooks kill bookstores: e-writer has Josh scared
Iwas watching an early Sopranos episode last week and was amazed to see a main character insert a prehistoric-looking blue plastic wafer directly into his computer.
Ohmigod, I realized, it’s a floppy disk — a piece of early computer technology that seemed futuristic 12 years ago when this Sopranos episode was made. Now it looked like something out of the Flintstones.
It reminded me of all the other technological marvels that have quickly become antiques in our fast-forward world — from videotapes and VCR machines to Walkmans, Discmans, transistor radios, short wave radios and tape recorders that use actual tape.
Just a few years ago, my 10-disc CD player seemed a music miracle. Now it’s another relic in the Museum of Technology graveyard in my basement — beside piles of outdated DVD machines, humongous old computer monitors and Neolithic Age dot-matrix printers.
I can’t bring myself to throw this stuff out because it seemed so precious so recently. I wish there was a backward Third World planet somewhere in space where we could send all our outdated 1990s stuff — because Earth’s Third World doesn’t want it. They want brand new stuff like us.
Our old gadgets aren’t the only things fast becoming obsolete; so are the stores that sell them and the people who work there. As people buy music online, music stores are becoming ghostly memories — like video stores.
The lovely Nicholas Hoare books on Greene Ave. has just closed, too, part of a tsunami of collapsing bookshops across the continent. The big U.S. chain Borders has gone under while Barnes and Noble, “America’s largest book store,” is closing shops everywhere — all murdered by Amazon.
But how do you prevent this when you’re part of it? I love browsing at bookshops, but I admit — I now buy mostly ebooks.
I wish real bookstores had a way for me for me to buy my ebooks right there. While browsing their paper books, I’d push a button on the cover that downloaded it to my e-reader and billed me.
Almost anything can now be bought online, but it’s a lonely place to shop.
I worry there will soon be fewer places to go, fewer excuses to leave your house.
Many male friends already buy their clothes online — from sites that have their measurements on computer. How long before we all send our “computer double” shopping, while we stay home waiting for the packages? And real clothing shops vanish.
Many supermarkets let you order groceries online and it won’t be long before you can squeeze the virtual tomatoes. Or until milk is delivered to your door (again) be- cause your smart fridge ordered it along with everything else it decided you need.
“MEMO, FRIDGE TO JOSH: replaced butter, juice, other staples. Also, you’ve consumed too many pizza pockets this month — your calorie count’s way up. I ordered 200 broccoli spears (vegetable drawer). Also I’m cooking couscous for dinner with the smart-stove. Fridge anti-noshing lock on until then.”
As online shoppers replace inline shoppers, how will real stores survive, or their employees? Automated supermarket cashiers will eventually replace humans once they get simpler for humans to use.
Computer-animated characters are expected to replace many movie actors (and already are) and also news anchors — as CBC News switches from Peter Mansbridge to Peter Rabbit.
What about us print journalists? Read this next sentence from a regular Forbes magazine business blogger:
“In spite of an expected dip in profit, most analysts are positive about Amazon.com (AMZN) before it reports its fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday, January 29, 2013.”
That was entirely written by a computer that “writes” a regular, long, financial blog for Forbes. How long before it writes the whole magazine?
Or before Josh is replaced by eJosh? In fact, how do you even know I wrote this?
How “virtual” will our reality get? I watched a 19-year-old female tennis player beat legendary champion Serena Williams last week in the Australian Open — where delirious young winners normally do somersaults and parade ecstatically before the screaming crowd.
Not this one. Ignoring the crowd, she marched straight to her bench where she picked up her cellphone and started checking her messages, like a teenager at the mall.
Maybe she was getting texts from her boyfriend, or catching up on dental appointments for braces. But I think she was just checking all her Twitter messages — which seemed more real to her than the people screaming around her.
It was another reminder that as technology races on, the onscreen world is screening out the real one.
This concludes the first column by eJosh 3.0, a new automated column software. It is an enhanced, updated and improved version of the earlier generation Josh 1.0, which has been retired to the Museum of Technology in his basement.