I remember (mis)using the local bookstore as my personal library during my childhood (late 80s, early 90s). The proprietor was somewhat in the mold of this auth

I remember (mis)using the local bookstore as my personal library during my childhood (late 80s, early 90s). The proprietor was somewhat in the mold of this author, and I learned a lot both from her as well as other patrons who stopped by, chatting, drinking copious amounts of free coffee, and buying books. In other words: it was one of those places that served far more purposes than just the economic one of distributing letters on dead trees. Then Amazon came along, and it was obviously far better, in many respects: suddenly, I had easy access to foreign language books, for one thing. But, less obviously, other benefits were lost. Mostly those that escape measurement by econometrics. Not just in terms of squeezing all there is out of people that are suddenly the subject of the economic force of an employer the size of Amazon. Small stores, within walking distance, i. e. the traditional "downtown" is gone, and with it all chances of surreptitiously meeting anyone from the mayor to your neighbour. It's all online now, or sometimes a big-box store outside of town within a barren cultural desert of parking lots and lots. But the argument is hard to make: why (and how) should anyone forgo cheap prices, or the comfort of intensely personal transport, for my vague yearning of community? And so it will continue, the better future, as imagined by Kafka and brought to the big screen in Wall-E. (presented here mostly as an alternative to the inevitable gloating of STEM majors over the failure of others to find a place in the world catering to their strengths and interests.)