I walked up Telegraph in Berkeley, CA past the empty Cody’s bookstore last weekend. I’ve seen it empty before, but it really struck me this time, maybe because I wasn’t in such a rush.

Cody’s. Empty. Gone.

I’m one of those people who believes that books saved my life by transporting me to other fictional and non-fictional worlds. The Web has extended those travels in a way that I never expected and for which I’m eternally grateful. But, I’ll always be a reader, always love books.

Cody’s, in particular, is in my bones because I grew up in Berkeley and went to UC Berkeley just up the street from that Telegraph store. Cody’s was always there, as an institution, for aimless browsing, gifts, doing assigments, and, best of all, inspiration.

If you’ve been in that Cody’s store, you’ll remember that upstairs was a sort of wall of fame with pictures signed by many of the great authors who had passed through there. And often, they guided your choice on what to read next. You wanted to know what they knew - to save yourself at least some time cultivating the secrets of life - and then add to it.

A day later I was reading this piece in the NYTimes about bargain hunting for books, which is really about how the Internet has disintermediated the book business. And. serendipitiously, they had talked to Andy Ross, the former owner of Cody’s:

Mr. Ross said he realized that Cody’s was doomed when he noticed that in the last year he hadn’t sold a single copy of that old-reliable for undergraduates, Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.” Students presumably were buying it online. Sales of classics and other backlist titles used to be the financial engine of publishers and bookstores as well, allowing them to take chances on new authors. Clearly that model is breaking. Simon & Schuster, which laid off staffers this month, cited backlist sales as a particularly troubled area.

Obviously, what has happened to Cody’s isn’t just about it or the book business in general. There are bits of destruction in every crook and cranny of our economic and social life. Let’s be sure to take that reality in. It’s a fucking big change.

The Internet has pushed us into a transactional/sharing world with an entirely different structure and set of rules, and 2008 has strongly punctuated that change for those who were a little unsure.

Here’s a pause, then, at the end of 2008 for Cody’s and the broader creative destruction that Cody’s demise represents. We have lost something, are losing something . . . at lightning speed.

However, that’s not the pause of this post. The final pause is for what the Internet has borrowed from the book readers and bookstores of the world - in a word, progress and hope - and (with a bit of help from you and me) has started to remix and remake how we live our lives.

Obama’s campaign has offered the latest and greatest example of what can be achieved with the “new.” Much more to come.

As we enter 2009, those authors on the wall upstairs at Cody’s are, no doubt, cheering us on. They know what we’re up to.

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