You had asked me to comment on the message board. So hear goes! :)
You can see from the reactions that conditioning is very difficult to give up. For a generation brought up on books, the feel, the comfort, the smell as someone put it is difficult to give up. But, you will be amazed how a 4 year old will prefer a computer to a book! You are right, the book in its present form will disappear.
In India knowledge was designed to be transferred by word of mouth. This also ensures knowledge is retained. Perhaps this was one reason why books were not accepted widely at first. It was easy with a book to not memorise, but look up in the book whatever one had forgotten. So, it need not be to exclude certain sections of society.
One more comment on the non-availability of books to certain classes of society. This was not so before the coming of the British, but it became terribly so by the time they left. Whatever the reasons for this, it must have been terrible for those who had 'suffer' those years.
