Reporter Bill Schackner's ending:
At Penn State University, literature professor Michael Berube said jokingly that thanks to the Internet, he's had no reason to leave his desk since 2002.
Reading a novel on a monitor can be unpleasant, and in fact, Dr. Berube said he knows no colleagues who do. But he's not sure people are any less likely to read.
"The same culture that's given us Google has given us the 800-page Harry Potter novel," he said.
"I try not to be too dour about this," he said. "I have a friend who was an early enthusiast of the Internet, and by that I mean, 1993. I would tell him 'Yeah, fine. Wake me up when you can find specific passages in books I can't even remember.' "
Fifteen years later, said Dr. Berube, "we're there."
Very interesting. As an aside, my third grader's teacher mentioned a controversy on how some teachers were starting to veer away from spending too much teaching cursive handwriting since kids will be using the computer for papers and such.
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