Bookstores [Was: Re: Going OT [Was: Re: Replacing PBXes with Open Source]]

[bscott at ntisys.com]

  As a counter-point...

  I've had nothing but positive experiences with Amazon's customer service,
both email and voice.  They respond quickly and are interested in helping.  
Likewise, they provide near-real-time information on availability and
shipping status.  All very impersonal, of course, but still very well done.  
At the same time, I get better prices, much better selection, and reader
reviews.

  The only advantage "brick-and-mortar" bookstores offer me is the ability
to browse the content, and that is slowly changing, too, as more and more
books becomes "pre-viewable" online.  Not only that, but more and more books
are becoming available in pure electronic form.  When there's nothing
physical to sell, the physical store becomes completely superfluous.

  Sure, sure, many still like the physical medium of paper and ink, for one
reason or another.  But in the future, when everybody has grown up with
e-books all around them, do you really think there will be that much call
for dead trees?

  We are witnessing the beginning of the end of an era.  Printed media is
becoming obsolete.  It will like tens, if not hundreds, of years to finish
doing so, but the wheel has begun to turn.  How appropriate that Gutenberg
bracket both the beginning[1] and the end[2].

[1] http://www.bl.uk/treasures/gutenberg/homepage.html
[2] http://www.gutenberg.net/

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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