Long centuries ago, in the quaint infancy of Earth, early humans entertained themselves by watching motion pictures recorded on magnetic tape spooled inside plastic cassettes — a clunky but charming form of video technology known as VHS.
In those dark days, VHS tapes could be played only on a specialized machine that attached to a single television set the size of a bank safe — so limited that entire families were forced to watch the same programs at the same time, sometimes even sharing a bowl of popcorn.
These consumers built blue-and-yellow palaces called Blockbuster Video stores and established them inside every American mini-mall, asking only that consumers hungry for their VHS treasures be kind and rewind…