Who are right

About the modern-day immersion of a technological generation, who is right, who divines the future? What oracle speaks?

"The electronic technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology on and through which the American way of life was formed." So recorded Marshall McLuhan 40 years ago.

"Has he (a social critic Thomas Frank) not noticed that everyone has a cellphone, that flatscreen TV’s are flying off the shelves and millions of new cares are being sold? ...Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, ... there’s nothing about equality. ... the core of America is liberty." So writes a resident of Connecticut.

Scary, exciting, liberating, frustrating, infinitely ambitious and thoroughly amnesic. If you live in a high-tech community ...you already live in this world." So thinks Michael S. Malone

"What’s really important is the culture of ideas and innovation" that books represent. But to "expect future generations to be satisfied with printed books is like expecting BlackBerry users of today to start communicating by writing letters." So believes a columnist L. Gordon Crovitz.

Which oracle tells us the future. Is the book dead or dying as technologies are continually created and/or transformed? Affluence accompanies higher and higher standards of living and quiet, down time for reading seems to be receding. The excitement of new ideas and new experiences will remain the key to the future. So? Why can’t both sides of the coin continue to be minted? Technies and luddites. Web browsers and bookworms. The Core of America is liberty.