Reading a recent piece reflecting on the demise of video stores, specifically independent video stores, made me reflect on the demise of Video Vault, an indie film mainstay in Alexandria that supplied film fans for a generation. Mike Musgrove’s article in the Washington Post about the Vault’s closing gives one a good idea of the pressures that made it close.
That article is probably a good warm-up for the aforementioned piece on indie video stores. It’s a much more personal first-person recollection by Dennis Perkins in Vox about the last days of a Portland, Maine video store.
As much as I like Netflix (and I do), it is flawed in terms of its selection and it is lacking that curated experience you get from those enterprising humans. We see this again and again with libraries, game stores, comic shops and other locations of specialized interest. You can automate information, but knowledge and wise advice appear to be lost –or at best diluted– in the automation process.
At the same time, market forces being what they are, I don’t see any financial incentive for knowledge and wisdom. That’s one thing Perkins’ article touches on — though I don’t see a practical solution with how the economy is structured. I suppose the curated experience could be preserved in libraries with a whole new generation of reference librarians and knowledge workers, but alas, libraries themselves are not being invested in a way that makes me feel rosy about their future.