What I Want to Make a Future Norm: A Town with a Bookstore

There is a scene I want to preserve as a "norm" of the future.
It is the sight of a bookstore on a street corner.

Now that autonomous driving and AI are becoming the foundation of our lives, one might ask why such an analog place is necessary. Certainly, online shopping, starting with Amazon, is magically convenient. You search for the book you want, press a button, and it arrives at your door the next day. There is no waste in that.

However, the encounters we truly need in life often lie outside of our "search terms."

The space of a bookstore is a gateway to the unknown. You walk through a forest of book spines arranged neatly, or perhaps haphazardly. Suddenly, along with the unique scent of ink, a book catches your eye. It might be a volume that a discerning bookseller placed there with passion. The moment you pick up that book—whose title and author you didn't even know—and flip through the pages, there lies a serendipity that no algorithm can calculate.

On the other hand, the world of the internet is too optimized for "me." The "recommendations" derived from purchase history and browsing data certainly reflect my tastes. But that is like being trapped in a comfortable room of mirrors. It is what is known as a "filter bubble." Information close to one's own thoughts and preferences is prioritized, while things that are different, difficult to understand, or new values that might fundamentally shake one's perspective are blocked without one even realizing it. The breadth of our thinking is unintentionally narrowed.

Reading a book is by no means an easy act. Unlike the passive time spent watching videos or scrolling through social media, it requires the active effort of following text and engaging one's imagination. However, that "trouble" becomes the plow that tills our inner selves. By going through the process of visualizing symbols—the text—in our minds and layering our emotions onto them, we can live the lives of others.

The life given to us is physically only once. Time and place are limited. No matter how much we hurry, we cannot see every view, nor can we taste every emotion.

That is precisely why we go to bookstores. To wander among shelves packed with thousands of lives, thousands of philosophies, and thousands of other worlds. To savor the luxury of intentionally getting lost in the gaps of an efficiency-driven society.

What I want to leave for the future is not just a shop that sells books. It is that very tranquil space itself, which teaches us how small we are while simultaneously showing us how vast the world is.

If you have time today, I hope you will put your smartphone in your pocket and head out into the city. Because in a corner of a bookstore shelf you entered without searching, a single line that could change your life might be quietly waiting for that moment.

#WhatIWantToMakeAFutureNorm