Thoughts from a B&N Employee

When I first heard about the Digital Human class, I thought that the concept was interesting, but I did not want to participate in it because I didn't think that I would have a lot to say about the topic. I have been a bibliophile for as long as I remember. I love the smell of books. I love how it feels to flip through the pages of a book. And despite the advice of old adages, I love to look at a book and decide whether I want to read it or not based on the cover.

Because of this love for books, I got a summer job at the Tulane Barnes and Nobel. I spent first two months of my summer unpacking boxes filled with books, putting books on shelves, stickering them, and rearranging them ever so often. I have read the back of the majority of the books in the store at this point.

Maybe a month into my working at B&N, my manager, Peggy, who has spent more than half of her life working with books, told me that we would soon be getting Nooks, the eReader for B&N, into our store. Everyone would have to learn how to use them and sell them. Peggy seemed irritated about this. At around the same time, she told me that the regional manager had decided to condense the book section of the store and replace it with clothing once the Nook got in. Peggy and I spent about two weeks sorting through books, making big piles on the floor of books that would have to be returned to make way for the clothing expansion. Once we were done, the other managers rearranged the store so that clothing took up about 2/3 of the lower level and books were left the remaining third. It had been split almost 50/50 before.

The day that the Nook display went up, there were lots of jokes about books becoming obsolete and the clothing section's slow takeover of the college book store. I think that Peggy and I shared the same resentment towards the eReader because of this. After spending some time learning about all of the Nook's handy features, however, I began to develop mixed feelings about the device.

On one hand, I feel like a traitor working at a book store and selling this product that could very well make books obsolete. On the other hand, I have to sell this eReader to keep my job because that's what Barnes and Nobel feels like having its employees do. On another hand, I'm an English major with a Spanish minor, and the Nook has really awesome stuff that could help me out with that like free classic literature and the ability to look up unfamiliar words and phrases, even Spanish words and phrases. Also, as a student, an eReader could be really helpful because textbooks will probably be available on eReaders, hopefully for a lower cost than the non-digital versions, and I won't have to carry giant books like the complete works of George Orwell around with me all day a couple days a week. (Thanks, Dr. Cotton!) And then on another hand, I just love books, and even though these eReaders let you digitally highlight and type notes, it's not at satisfying or as simple as putting pen to paper in a real book. On some other hand, a customer was telling me that when books became available to read online and on iPods and things like that, book sales actually increased and the new technology actually just served to promote reading in general. We both hoped that eReaders would do something similar. I'm up to like five on the other hands, and I don't even have that many hands. In short, I don't know how to feel about eReaders, but it's something that I've been thinking about a lot and will continue to think about. I have already witnessed some ways that the eReaders have changed things, and I will be interested to see what else comes of these devices.

Coffee Shops in Exchange for Youtube and Blogs

So I've been out of New Orleans this summer since I'm preparing to run off to France and need to visit with the family I haven't seen much of in my 4 years away at school. On some nights I want to visit with friends, but we find ourselves at a lack of what to do. We often don't find ourselves free until the evening and have difficulty finding out what to do. We can pay about $10 to see a movie where we can't talk to one another. We can walk around a mall that closes at 9 anyway and is typically loud, bright, and overwhelming. We can wander around Wal-mart that stays open 24 hours. In New Orleans, my friends and I often sat in coffee shops until the early hours of the morning talking and listening to one another.

Additionally, there are no "open mic" nights at local coffee shops in Houston, TX because there are no local coffee shops. In high school, I got over some of my bashfulness by playing every Sunday at Zebo's coffee. This coffee shop went out of business when good ol' Starbucks opened down the street. Yet, Starbucks doesn't allow the same dark, acoustic music and late night discussions that Zebo's or coffee shops of New Orleans practice. Starbucks plays certain CDs on a speaker that they sell within the store, and their late night discussions are cut pretty short at 9 or 10pm. They also use automatic espresso shot machines, sell Starbucks everything instead of local vendors, and their decor makes all of the Starbucks look about the same. How does this affect our country's creative development? With the industrialization and cookie cutter molding of the coffee shops that helped to breed some of the most brilliant creative minds, where will our future poets, musicians and writers go talk late at night, start playing music in front of others, scribble stream of consciousness ideas or scattered thoughts?

Some people may answer this dilemma of a lack of creative space in coffee shops with the use of youtube musicians and blogs of creative writing. How will these tools affect the next generation of creative thinkers?