by Outcast_Searcher » Thu 19 Apr 2018, 21:34:11
Old hardcopy books don't cease to exist. I LOVE to read, and resources like Abebooks are just fantastic for people who want to read older stuff, and care more about the contents than what the book might look like.
And the internet has been ideal for making online used bookstores usable, by making it where any such bookstore that doesn't have an easily searchable inventory is pretty much obsolete.
(Before the World Wide Web became popular, MANY used bookstores were very poorly organized, and the (idiot) employees would often expect customers to look/sort through thousands of books on a given subject.
People can have reasonable differences on the value of the internet overall (given all the negatives about information, privacy, hacking, etc), but for used books, this fan says it's completely remade that industry.
Now, if you don't know several words in the title of the book -- FINDING it might be well nigh impossible. The energy outlook, re fossil fuels has changed a LOT (at least for the intermediate term) in the past 11 years anyway.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.