Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
So Borders is bankrupt. No surprise, no one is saying, “oh, I didn't see it coming,” and no one is really saying much of anything. We knew thugs weren't good, we suspected the worst, and were pretty much getting it. There's just no surprise, just a kind of sadness.
So I'm asking myself this; what happens next to Borders?
As we've seen in the last few months, I have a strange obsession with issues of originality and media. That obsession exists because we progeeks work in media, we consume media, we experiment and play with media in the form of fan fiction fan art and mods, and we improve by manipulating media. As originality is part of media and questions about the value of media, thus I obsess over it.
Also, people complain about unoriginality all the time, so by addressing it I hope to explore issues about originality, media, and consumption. Also I'm just a curious guy that will analyze anything; come on you know that by now.
One last subjects are talked about was that originality seem to be most useful to creating media sales and interest was part of the gradual evolution of a game concept, literary concept, genre, and so on. I may have just found the perfect example of a successful implementation of originality–and-gradual-evolution in the form of the game "Bulletstorm."
Quick; I want you to imagine the makers of smart phone or console that refused to have Netflix on it. Wait, or maybe they decide they don't want any Facebook technology on it. Or maybe, just maybe they don't want anything to do with that whole "Twitter thing."
Can you see it? Nope, neither can I. And why can't I see it? Because Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other companies have made themselves more or less indispensable to large customer bases. They're not going anywhere, they've learned from the mistakes of their predecessors (such as Facebook learned from MySpace and Netflix learn from,well, everybody), understand that they can make up the infrastructure of people's lives.