Are we nearing the point were there the actual printed on paper word will be gone? Everything electronic, everything existing out there "in the cloud?"

The market seems to be sending that message to Borders Books.

Perhaps this end to large supermarket sized bookstores is a good thing. Maybe it's the blowoff top to mass marketing of the printed word. It seems that the future is in electronically distributed thoughts and ideas, an example being this very blogpost.

However, I think there will be a backlash, so to speak, before long, to this undeniable trend. People like to hold books, magazines, and newspapers in their hands, to set them down and come back later, to put them on a bookshelf with other packets of thought and knowledge as a collection of favorite stories, philosophy or thoughts. As a monument perhaps to what they have accomplished as a thinker or student.

Books, or the actual written word, are enduring (as well as endearing!). They don't depend for their existence or accessibility on the health of some server in a far away place, or on the tolerance of a fickle government. Once you have those books or magazines physically stacked on a shelf in your living room, they are yours, and if given only minimal care, will last for hundreds of years. As long as there isn't a flood or fire, you will be able to retrieve them at no cost or risk, and read at your leisure. If distracted, you return your book to the shelf ( after marking your spot with a nice handmade bookmark) and are free to return to your place at any future time.

And thieves have no clue as to their value. They will leave them alone in favor of making off with your Kindle.

Books are low tech, time proven, easily maintained things, which feel good to the hand and eye, and which, once bought, don't depend on anyone else for their existence or accessibility.

Which leads me to predict that once Borders and it's ilk are gone, we may see the return of the neighborhood bookstore. The funky hole in the wall place where one can enjoy the browse, the feel, and the look of a variety of books. Where you can find just the one you wanted but didn't know about until you spied it there on the shelf.

That will be a good thing. That may just be a better world.

And all those private libraries might become subversive. They will be secret storage places of thoughts, philosophies and narratives that leave no electronic trace, and that are therefore nearly impossible for the authorities to locate and eliminate. They will be so under the radar of those who want to control the flow of information and thought that those who believe all should think as they do will, in their lack of imagination, ignore.

All the better for the rest of us.