Alive, but gradually slipping towards life support.<p>Right now my daily habits include regular trips to Borders to browse the books for the price of a coffee. But in another year or two I expect that I will have switched to toting around some kind of tablet/ebook device to get a more flexible reading experience. I've already started feeling constrained by the selection available from a single store. I'm waiting on the technology to settle down a little, work through the early-adopter headaches, and present a really solid experience before I switch, but once I make that switch I'll have no reason to prefer Borders for coffee drinking - I could go anywhere to do my reading. I know I'm not alone in this behavior. I'll buy newspapers sometimes while I'm out, but that's about it.<p>Borders is already a company in trouble, and I don't see any reason for their fortunes to go up unless they make a drastic business model change to reflect the rise of e-reading. It won't be much different for other booksellers; niche literature will last for longer since they won't be digitized for a while, but mainstream publishing is about to get clobbered.<p>Paper for writing, sketches, and other creative tasks will stick around for a long time to come, though. I can buy a tiny pocket notebook and pencils for ~$5, and they'll continue to beat out the high-tech stuff for a good many years to come.<p>The "iSomethingSomething" might be that killer device, or it might wait for another generation or two. There is no "if" in my mind about the overall direction of things, though.