Like Ann Arbor native Jay Nordlinger, I remember when there was just one Borders, and what an amazing place it was in the seventies. I wasn’t shocked that it became a chain, though I wondered why such a chain would have just happened to have started in the town where I went to school. But the owners didn’t have the foresight of Jeff Bezos, and anticipate the future. But even if they had, it’s not clear that they could have saved the brick and mortar. Even the best buggy-whip manufacturers didn’t survive the advent of the automobile. Like, Jay, though, I wonder how we will be able to browse on the Internet, and how to capture the scents and the social experience of discovering a wonderful book for which you hadn’t been looking.

Michigan native (and resident once again) John Miller has more thoughts, as does Rich Lowry, with some relevant commentary on creative destruction and the moribund stasis of government bureaucracies.

[Update a while later]

Many commenters note, both here and at the links, that Borders committed suicide by losing touch with what made it attractive in the first place, so it wasn’t even one of the better buggy-whip makers. It’s also worth noting that some of the carriage makers survived into the auto age by adapting (e.g., Fisher Body in Flint and later other places as part of GM, and Studebaker).