Books- The Last Chapter ?.

The question is being raised as to whether those coming generations who will learn to read from screens will engage with books in the same way as those previous generations who grew up with the printed book.Will they ever read a whole book ? or merely be contented with extracts and precis ,a sort of literature light.The critic George Steiner in his masterful work In Bluebeard's Castle ,Some Notes Towards a Re-Definition Of Culture prophesied as long ago as 1970 that Western literature of the last few centuries would gradually become inaccessible  to the common reader.Just as classical literature has become a minority interest with few reading Plato or Homer these days so will modern literature with the great authors of the past largely unread. The culture of the past would in effect become the property of a minority of intellectuals rather in the way that Mustapha Mond the Controller in Huxley s Brave New World has The Bible and Shakespeare in his safe while the lower castes are restricted to the feelies.The modern feelies are only too obvious from Reality TV to Video Games.If everything is left to consumer choice with one choice as good as another the majority may well  prefer the feelies in the same way that someone who has never eaten a proper meal will prefer branded junk food to one.