When he encounters a three-dimensional creature, Mr. Sphere, he can't understand the stranger's seemingly magical ability to vanish and reappear, and to change size as he passes through the plane of Flatland. The most antisocial approach to digital media belongs to the publishing industry, which seems to think that putting novels on a handheld screen is a good idea. Publishers know how to sell book-length texts, and they want to keep selling them. So digital delivery is an obvious strategy - same product, different channel.
Problem is, book-length texts are a lousy experience on screens of any sort.
In fact, even when the National Academy of Science posted all its books on the Internet in PDF, for free, printed book sales tripled. MIT Press also put its books online and saw a similar boost. Charging for online texts would have been counterproductive. Of course, as media distribution migrates to the digital world, companies will want to charge for something. It's not a wild, visionary stretch to say that these products should do what the network is good at, rather than the things that stored media is good at.