I was one of the crowd who helped Esther Dyson move out of her old office space last weekend.  My focus was the conference room.  Hundreds of internet business books, books about the brain, books about complexity, books about visualization, books (in short) that I either wanted to read or already had read were stacked on shelves in that room.  It was like a reunion of old pals, that set of books. 

Each one of those authors had big ideas and wanted to change the world.  The familiar covers were so attractive and hopeful.  Be an internet bazillionaire!  See everything differently!  Throw away every preconception!  Find wisdom in others!  Understand string theory!

Probably one of those books tells us that there aren't going to be books any more.  Books are so limiting, the book says.  They don't link.  They don't have streams of meaning that we can follow with our friends.   I probably packed up that book, without knowing it, sealing its fate along with hundreds of others. 

I packed up box after box.  I wonder if those boxes will ever be opened again.  Maybe a historian of the boom-bust-boom will want to reconstruct what it was like to be in the middle of those books, and to be sent an advance copy of "Smart Mobs."