Their sense of memory and structure is not that of orality. The book is also more and other than a hypertext, website, or screen. It retains its own characteristics, which will not be transformed by electronic media. In a fundamental sense, the book is a manuscript chosen for broad distribution in discrete physical locations. It is a sifting mechanism, and a venue.
Publishers select certain manuscripts or content from a sea of possible candidates.
Texts are then made ubiquitous, though accessible only as commodities. The web makes a billion texts accessible, but hardly detectable. The network, in other words, requires a degree of hierarchy, selection, and topographic organization. The network is not inimical to hierarchy of a kind. Web pages have home pages.