The city of Alexandria invited Umberto Eco who gave a a lecture on the future of books. Maybe readworthy.

Marginal comments:

—Let me speak for the sake of simplicity of vegetal memory in order to designate books. (Why not speak simply of books?)

—The WWW is the Great Mother of All Hypertexts, a world-wide library where you can, or you will in short time, pick up all the books you wish. (An to break copy-right?)

—A person reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica every night before sleeping, from the first to the last page, would be a comic character. (I don't agree.)

—E-books … will not substitute for other kinds of books that we love to read in bed before sleep … (Will they?)

—I have been told that some hackers, grown up on computers and unused to browsing books, have finally read great literary masterpieces on e-books, but I think that the phenomenon remains very limited. (Hoho. No comment.)