Harold: I'm like you, still reading lots of books but also lots of digital text too. I'm finding out about books differently, rather than no longer reading books. I'm currently reading The Art of Learning / Josh Waitzkin because someone else at LibraryThing.com had read it and has more books in his library in common with mine than any other subscriber. I've just added The Alphabet and the Goddess / Leonard Shlain to my reading pile. I'm expecting it to give me better sense of what came before literacy that will get revived.

My take on McLuhan's prediction of our moving from the Gutenberg Galaxy to the Global Village did not forecast the end of books. He foresaw the end of "print heads", making sense of life experiences congruently with printing presses, typography and ink on paper. Now we give meaning to things in sync with electricity. Here's a few of those changes:

-- 14,000 copies of book are all the same text and pictures -> 14,000 digitized blogs reveal different text, pictures, links, tags, etc (self expression, uniqueness, diversity)
-- printing presses create bestselling authors who define authority for everyone -> everyone reads differently and supports countless small presses, authors with cult followings, very popular authors without official credentials (miscellaneous viewpoints, long tail creatives, post modernism)
-- printed books take a long manufacturing process to deliver -> Amazon or Lulu print one book when it's ordered from the PDF in their database (zero turnaround time, on demand, 24/7)

We now expect life to be delivered instantaneously, matched to our unique preferences and with respect for the entire planet. Slow makes it useless, not more special or polished. "Factory made" means boring, derivative, lacking customization. "Hot off the press" means reviewed by editors, sponsored by advertisers, confined to cultural premises. "Mass media" means corporations are involved serving shareholders exclusively. "Bargain price" means somewhere in the world people suffered to cut the production costs.

So I suspect we will continue reading books printed on 100% recycled paper, bought used or borrowed from libraries whenever possible and offered digitally as well as a few hard copies.