What Would They Have Thought?

The articles looked at for last week in The New Media Reader, all dealt, more or less, with the concept of how society is effected by technology.  The readings, all dated to some extent, offer up theories of how technology has effected society, and how it will effect our future.  I wonder what Williams or Enzensberger would have thought of technology today -- whether or not they would have seen their theorize legitimized or not.

An episode of Oprah last week focused on The Kindle, amazon.com's Wireless Reading Device.  This is not the first of its kind to come out, but seems to be the most technologically advanced, and of course, the fact that Oprah endorsed it as her "favorite new gadget," has gained a lot of attention.

Enzensberger believed that it would be unlikely for a world to exist without the printed book.  In a society where magazine sales are increasingly declining, and where newspapers are having to cut down on staff size because of poor sales -- in a world where a Kindle can be purchased instead of a book -- where bookstores and libraries are becoming more and more obsolete -- where does Enzensberger's claims lie?