by Susie Kim
July 18, 2011
Today is a sad, catastrophic day: it is the beginning of the book-meltdown revolution. As you may have hear, Borders Group, the corporation that controls Borders Bookstore, has announced that they will be liquidating their remaining 400 stores, taking away 11,000 positions from their employees. California's unemployment rate just went down too! I am not sure if these people will be able to receive their unemployment checks.
This is when technology, the almighty literacy haven, becomes a nightmare for people with jobs in the literature/ writing industry. With the closure of Borders nation-wide, publishing companies will print less books to save money; why would they print the same amount, when one of the leading book distributor has gone down? Amazon and Barnes and Nobles are the last remaining book companies and the internet isn't really helping with its free and easily accessible collection of informative resources.
I was in Barnes and Noble the other day to buy a book... it was $17.95. With my teacher- 25% discount, it would be about $15. So I decided I would save my money and look for it online, which I did. I would've preferred the book but why pay at all if I can attain the same or about the same amount of information online for free? Now I feel guilty about not buying that book... my purchase would probably have saved a person's job. But at a time like this when unemployment rate is high, and people are living paycheck-to-paycheck (like me), it is hard to think about others when one can barely survive on him/herself.
Technology is great because it is cheap, easily attainable and accessible, and bountiful. Technology is evil because it creates pollution, takes away manual labor which in effect takes away jobs. Technology is terrible, yes, but also great (yes, a quote from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone).
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