The Passing of an Age

The MIT Coop, bookstore and overall "stuff" location, is closing to be replaced by a megalith office building occupied by Google. So says MIT Tech:

The MIT COOP will close its Kendall Square location Feb. 25 and relocate to a temporary location at 80 Broadway. The building it currently occupies at 325 Main Street will be demolished and replaced with a new commercial building.

This is an interesting change. They already closed the Harvard Medical Coop a few years back but this is I believe more important.

In the old days, say 1960s or so, one could go into the book store and examine a multiplicity of books, getting ideas from within the pages. It was more open than the library and of course there was no Amazon. I recall hundreds of new ideas collected from the rambling. The physical book said a great deal, it conveyed the attention and competence of the author, it created a nexus to other ideas, and it frequently went home with me. Most of which I still retain, and even use.

Now replacing a bookstore with a Goggle office complex say a great deal about our new world. There was no Google filtering our thoughts. There is now. One must use Google say to find out what is there. They track and share our every thought, monetize out daily needs and wants, and displace the watering holes of our minds with vapid office space.

So farewell to what has lasted for thousands of years, the market for ideas, and welcome to the new world of thought control.