“I don’t know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war, assuming there will be a third world war. But I can tell you what the fourth world war will be fought with: stone clubs.” – Albert Einstein

Chapters, the famous book retailer and a landmark for every book reader in Montreal for decades, is now closing its doors. It’s a very sad move, but it is not surprising. After all, most people who buy books are buying their books online and they’re increasingly buying them in a digital format, and most people who used to buy books are now busy on social websites spreading rumors or gambling spending their dollars playing candy crush and other nonsense on their mobile phones.

Other than the changing habits of its clientele, Chapters is closing its doors in downtown Montreal because of three other reasons:

1. Its physical proximity to the retail store of its parent, Indigo.
2. The skyrocketing rent and heating bills in Montreal (we’re talking about $400k/month for its four storey building).
3. Most books written nowadays are sci-fi trash and/or written by authors who can’t even write (the problem is that nowadays everyone thinks of himself/herself as an author/editor/composer/performer/etc…)

So, what’s with the Einstein quotes in the beginning of this post? Well, it seems that this prediction may very well come to being realized. If all our books become online, and if the online world, for one reason or another, disappears (you can use your own imagination on how it can disappear), then we will lose the tens of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, it’ll be like burning the library of Alexandria all over again, but exponentially more harmful to the human civilization.

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