When there are no more printing presses -- when the books are gone, when all old knowledge has been digitized, and all new knowledge is digitally distributed -- then there will be only one way to access powerful and empowering knowledge, a way that is mediated (and monitored and limited) by corporations and governments who develop and control the proprietary delivery systems of all things digital. Who controls that technology? Who designs those tools? For whom will they be made available, and under what conditions? Who will guarantee texts a place on the grid, and who will guarantee us access to the grid as readers? And who will assure us that even if the grid goes dark, and stays dark for far too long, we can still access the knowledge embedded in those unreadable digital files?
Or will digital texts become the new hieroglyphics, faint scratchings on the pedestal of a vast colossal wreck of a culture that unwisely abandoned a well-worn instrument of liberation: printed words on a page, "portable property," books simply -- but not always safely -- passed from one hand to another.
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