Since they are not reading anyways, why have books? Since we seem in many ways to be headed back to a new feudal age, why even teach reading? An illiterate population is easier to control than a literate one. An illiterate ruler can be controlled by the literate church.

Reading is thinking. America, at least, does not seem to want thinkers. Rather, my country wants consumers — consumers of digital media.

In a current library journal, not sure which one, D.J. Hoek, Head of the Music Library at Northwestern University, discusses how music is becoming unavailable to library patrons because iTunes and other electronic distribution mechanisms explicitly only allows the final end-user to download music. He writes that now music is becoming legally unavailable to both libraries and archives.

The written word, it would seem, will disappear too behind a corporate curtain too. Consume forever.