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It’s hard to remember a time when Netflix didn’t seem like a good idea. The company opened its first distribution center, in San Jose, CA, in 1998, and initially aimed to create the typical Blockbuster experience: Each rental was $4, plus $2 for postage, and there were late fees. In a 2002 interview with Wired magazine, the company’s founder and CEO, Reed Hastings, described the pre-2000 Netflix as “a typical Internet company…an ugly financial story, with not much hope of breaking even.” But when the company switched to its now-familiar subscription, no-late-fee model in 1999, it took off, delivering 100,000 DVDs by October of that year. It shipped its billionth DVD (Babel) in February 2007 and today has 8.7 million members and over 100,000 titles, with plans ranging from $4.99 to $47.99. The company’s Amazon.com-like recommendations feature is used by 60% of members to select their DVDs, and its revenue-sharing agreements means that film studios are invested in the company’s success. Netflix was named the Retail Innovator of the Year by the National Retail Federation in 2007…..

….So will libraries eventually become people’s main source of digital reading material and audiobooks? Will book-rental sites eventually become their main source of old-fashioned reading material? “As a society we have reached the epoch of clutter, and we’re starting to shed it,” says Ginsberg. “As we move into the twenty-first century, people are a little more secure about who they are and much more interested in getting what they want out of life. As the cost of living goes up, the size of our living quarters goes down, and people are interested in not being completely crammed out of their own place.”