The bookstores of the near future will be a cold dead (nonexistent?) place in cyberspace. As the triumphant transition from analog to digital creeps further into our lives/minds/lifestyles we are losing something. Actually we're losing alot of things...
The art of 35mm film printing/processing is dead now, this was something I once took great pride in as my only marketable skill. I was good at printing. I enjoyed printing images and modifying images that would turn into people's storable memories, laughs and cries in the future. But now, try to drop off a roll of 35mm film somewhere and come back in an hour to pick it up. Just try it. Search your neighborhood, search online. Go ahead. In fact buy a roll of film and look around your house or apt for 2 hours for that old 35mm camera and shoot it first. Take pictures of things that are important to you. Your dog, your cat, your wife or husband, your kids, your bicycles, whatever you love. Get some images burned into that roll to give it value. 35 mm film used to have tremendous value. And now go try to get it developed and printed. Good luck. It's a scary world out there for weirdos like you who don't want to follow the herd...
I remember when a 2.1 megapixel digital camera used to cost $1000 and people bought them...for a year, then kicked themselves for not waiting for the prices to come down. But isn't that what this whole digital thing is about? Instant gratification! Expensive instant gratification, but no less instant. I remember listening to the sales guys at the camera store i worked in explaining all the benefits of digital and how you wouldn't need to print all your photos anymore. You could now delete the ones that didn't look good, that were out of focus, the ones that didn't catch everyone eyes open and smiling. And you could just download them to your computer instead of printing them if you wanted to. All these "benefits"! You could email pictures instead of mailing them! I remember the standalone Fuji thermal printer that made the crappiest prints I'd seen at that point at the bargain price of something like 90 cents per print! I remember preaching to the sales guys back then that this digital push in the photo industry was going to make the whole industry eat itself. 12 years later Ritz Camera has pretty much disappeared. A quick "Ritz camera wiki" google search just revealed that the company which started in 1918 in an Atlantic City Ritz hotel by Benjamin Ritz as a portrait studio, 18 years later in 1936 opening it's first film processing facility has just last month decided to liquidate it's assets after 4 years of chapter 11 bankruptcy protection couldn't get it back on it's feet. Eastman Kodak which at one point controlled 90% market share in photographic films, started in 1889, (yep read that one more time, EIGHTEEN EIGHTY NINE!!!) founded by George Eastman hasn't made a profit since 2007 and is dumping it's photo film, digital camera and digital photo frame lines and pretty much just trying to stay alive in the motion picture film market so it doesn't disappear as well. They filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January this year. This is not a good sign. (Understatement of the century) Yesterday Stacey, my significant other got out her 35mm camera and took a picture of our cat. My eyes widened and I got this jealous/anxious/almost annoyed feeling. I starting interrogating her about how old the film was, as expired film won't make good pictures, where she was planning on getting the pictures developed and why she still has film in her camera. She told me it wasn't old, she'd bought it at the drugstore and took pictures recently at her annual Ladies Weekend beach house getaway on this roll. Later yesterday afternoon we spoke with a couple friends we ran into at a coffee shop about where to get film printed, and our friend Dave recounted a recent experience at the drugstore that he tried to drop his film off at and how they had all the equipment back in the corner but told him "that stuff doesn't work". He suggested a place that we could send out film to get developed. The days of cross processing slide film through a c41 machine at your local camera store and getting it printed with crazy colors/contrast are long gone friends. Long gone.
Music is one of the things that I've failed the most to "keep up" with in the digital age. I do not currently own anything that will play an mp3 other than this computer. (Actually my phone might but I don't know how to do it and it's not a smart phone) I recently joined the 99.99999% of people in western civilization who download music. I have not been to itunes yet, i have not paid for any digital music yet. I also recently purchased a record player and have been listening to vinyl at home, and have only downloaded records that I've purchased the vinyl copy of using the free download cards that came with them and I've downloaded a song off of lastfm. I have been listening to cd's since the early 90's and owned the first cd player in my parents house at age 13, but I just never got on board with the downloading thing. I guess I always just wanted to hold and look through my collection of music, this concept certainly applies to how i feel about books as well. I love having a decent book collection. I love the way it looks. I like looking through other people's books, getting to know them through the books that they've chosen to buy and what they've read. But, i digress...
Music for the majority of people is becoming a dead, meaningless thing. Young people hear a song in the car when they're driving with their friends or in a television commercial or in a store they're shopping in and they can immediately go on their phone and download it, just that one song. Not that long ago, young folks would hear a song on the radio and go to the record store and buy the record to take home and enjoy listening to it in it's entirety. This isn't a new complaint, it's been brought up billions of times since the concept of downloading music showed it's ugly little head. This isn't even a good place to complain about it, this is supposed to be a bicycle related blog! (hahahaha!) But it's still valid as there are still stores that we can go to buy music! They're called record stores! And we should be in them! Or mail ordering from small record labels!
Dare i even start on the book industry's transition to digital? I really don't even want to start typing about it. I find myself screaming inside when I talk to people about their kindles or nooks or whatever the newest e-reader is these days. I worked at Borders Books for a little while and Stacey worked there for around 10 years. We watched the sales drop, we watched the digital readers arrive and sit in the displays, we watched the seemingly slow transition and then we watched the store close. Part of Borders and most chain book store problems were when the economy went downhill, people stopped buying things that we sold there. The store also sold dvds and cds (see above paragraph about downloading music and then add the concept of netflix and you can easily follow the path to a culture no longer willing to pay $20 for a movie on dvd). But I can't help but point out that our culture as a whole is transitioning to never touching music, movies or books these days. We're only touching our electronic devices that "contain" these things, or that we can access them through and I don't think this is a good thing. Music and movies and books are losing value in our lives while our culture races ever faster into newer better faster ways to access the things that entertain us without the liner notes. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy being able to search through record label websites, bandcamp.com and bands' websites to hear songs of bands I've never heard before, but I'm getting to a point that when given the option, I'm going to buy it and listen to it on vinyl.
And I'm going to dig out my 35mm fixed lens Olympus Stylus point and shoot and do just that!
