Books -The Last Chapter ?

Last week the BBC broadcast a television program on their arts series Imagine. It was entitled Books -The Last Chapter and fronted by their chief arts man Alan Yentob.The program which was only an hour long was devoted to the topic of the demise of the printed book.Since the 15th century our civilization has been based upon the printed book so such a prospect is literally an enormous one.The rise of the e book is now revolutionizing the literary  world .Surely the demise of the printed book is a revolution on a par with any of the great revolutions in history.However the only debate I have seen so far is this little BBC program.There were some interesting points in it with various technophiles and bibliophiles arguing their points of view.The technophiles were the usual American Silicon Valley suspects with their zero knowledge of human history and their unlimited optimism.One could imagine them if they had been around in Russia in 1917 or Germany in 1933 jumping on the bandwagon  saying "We are going to totally revolutionize society ,create a whole new world and a new human being to live in it .Anyone who opposes us is just an old fashioned reactionary Luddite who wants to live in the past.".Well we know now how those particular revolutions turned out for the people who believed  in them. So perhaps we  should look more closely at the revolution we are currently engaged in.