In one of Plato's Dialogues "The Phaedrus" Socrates argues about writing as following (@ section 274c by invoking the Egyptian Myth of the God Theuth inventing

In one of Plato's Dialogues "The Phaedrus" Socrates argues about writing as following (@ section 274c by invoking the Egyptian Myth of the God Theuth inventing "letters"): "[275a ...] For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir, not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise. [...]" "[275d ...] Writing, Phaedrus, has this strange quality, and is very like painting; for the creatures of painting stand like living beings, but if one asks them a question, they preserve a solemn silence. And so it is with written words; you might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their sayings, they always say only one and the same thing. [...]" "[276a ...] the living and breathing word of him who knows, of which the written word may justly be called the image" This self-reflected, self-conscious "inferiority" to the very living, breathing, vanishing "speech" - the written letter being at best a very poor at its worst a misrepesentative image - gives "birth", I would argue, to (modern western) literature, as we know it. Philip K. Dick is a literal example of a relentless chase in writing a Exegesis ("a religious/contemplative practice of pointing beyond the text") until his writing drive is completely void of any "letters" to be written. A hell of a ride. In a way looking back at "books" kind of is just the echo within the echo of the speech dying away in the moment being "spoken". So trying to find something in books which is "missing" in our "Age of Constant Distraction" is the very same gesture, albeit - in my reading - literary trapped in a ancient rhetoric figure: “Today's youth is rotten to the core, it is evil, godless, and lazy. It will never be what youth used to be, and it will never be able to preserve our culture."