Think of the process of learning how to use a piece of software. Usually the system is able to display on the screen all the instructions you need. It is possible to conceive of a visual program that explains very well how to print and bind a book, but in order to get instructions on how to write such a computer program, we need a printed manual. After having spent no more than twelve hours at a computer console, my eyes are like two tennis balls, and I feel the need to sit comfortably down in an armchair and read a newspaper, or maybe a good poem. Nobody is going sit down and curl up with a twitchy little screen.
Books are the one medium which is larger than television and movies together and has no advertising.
We can thumb through books, dog-ear them and use them as weights, and even press flowers in them. The book is a symbolic object. It has spent centuries in our culture in the form of knowledge, dreams, faith and values. Now, I am not sure how anyone else feels, and I don't have any knowledge of the research, but I don't believe that in the eight months left of this century, this technology will become readily available. But who is to say that in the next 25 years we will not have this kind of technology become available.