There were microcosms of community in that kind of collection. For example if a movie made it to the video store, instead of everyone just watching it at their house you had more incentive to get a bunch of mates to watch it at someones house together.
You also knew what everyone had access to so you mostly watched the same stuff. These days I can watch whatever niche thing I want, but none of my friends will have seen it.
For what it's worth, I went into this article thinking it would be about web browsing, as in surfing the web in the 90s when everything wasn't so streamlined and so feed-driven. But the point is the same: Browsing is exploratory. It's sometimes disappointing, sometimes surprising. Sometimes boring, sometimes interesting.
This is how I feel about buying stuff at thrift stores. No website to browse the inventory. Just go and see what’s there. Clothing-wise, I wear a huge variety of clothing brands now that I would never have had the stamina to find if I had to go into individual stores and it’s a bonus to pay a fraction of what I otherwise would.
A disproportionate number of the disagreements and fights amongst my friends during my ill-spent youth took place in the Blockbuster stacks trying to decide on a mutually agreeable film.
In any case, libraries have solved the scaling problem up to hundreds of thousands of titles or so, you combine browsing with a topical cataloging system (So you can get to the general area that interests you and browse around).
Sure, and most people had never been to one like that, and those who did go there were generally pretty knowledgeable about movies. I'm not sure it would have worked as a mass market user experience.
The point is not scaling in the way I think you mean. The point is that lossy, messy, less targeted search was a different mode of finding. It required something more than just consumption on the part of the human. And it rewarded us with unexpected bounties.
Browsing was more like fishing than being served fish fingers.
Stewart Brand's information wanted to be free. Today's information wants to be whatever the algorithm will allow us to have. That's what the article is trying to get us to think about. Without telling us what to think.
You also knew what everyone had access to so you mostly watched the same stuff. These days I can watch whatever niche thing I want, but none of my friends will have seen it.