Today, poets dream of grants and fellowships, not of heaven. The little magazine is a classical American impulse which, in our national context, dates back at least to Emerson's The Dial . It has been all but gobbled up by NEA largesse. The Medici knew, and practiced, art. As a society, we've entered a world of merging communications technologies, where speed is paramount and information is exchanged in matters of seconds.
Books are in danger today because of the electronic and communication revolutions.
I don't think anyone knows how this will turn out. I worry about pictures replacing writing. What all of us worry about today is that image has supplanted text. Children are beginning to think in pictures, images, not words. Anthony Burgess talked about the visual vs. the real worlds.