Not only that, printed word used to be expensive! There's a remark made by George Orwell somewhere in which he addresses the claim made in the early 20th centur

Not only that, printed word used to be expensive! There's a remark made by George Orwell somewhere in which he addresses the claim made in the early 20th century that the working class don't read because they can't afford books. He counters that assertion by calculating that, based on the cost of going to the pictures, and the number of times a year a working-class person is likely to go, they could afford to buy enough second-hand books to read for several hours a week. On the other hand, for anyone with a smartphone (something like 90% of adults in the developed world), there is zero marginal cost to accessing unlimited written word. I think, on the contrary, we've never as a society been more literate. Never before has such a large proportion of our communication been through text. The "deep reading" complaint might be re-characterised (and in fairness the article hints at it) as the fact that the internet makes many-to-many communication by written word as cheap as one-to-many. When the economic barriers to reaching an audience are removed, the written word more closely represents the average reader, which has never been closer than today to the average person.