I appreciate your politely being the devil's advocate. Some answers below... >> Books have never been cheaper. >Thanks to market distortions enforced by a st

I appreciate your politely being the devil's advocate. Some answers below... >> Books have never been cheaper. >Thanks to market distortions enforced by a still-growing >quasi-monopoly, whose stock price is only propped up by Wall >Street's expectation that they will jack those prices way, >way up once all the competition has been flattened and >customers have nowhere else to go. Even in the worst case, today's access to books is much better than ever in history. It is easier to learn about most every topic than ever before. >> I can video call around the world. >If you and the person on the other end both use the same >software out of dozens of options. "Let's see, Jane is on >Skype, but Mike uses Google Hangouts..." Even with multiple standards, it's much better than years ago when video calling didn't exist, and regular calls were very expensive. >> Almost anything can be delivered quickly. >If you live in San Francisco or New York City. If you happen >to be among the very few people who live anywhere else, your >mileage may vary. Even in Middle America, delivery is still cheaper and better than any time in history. >> Email has taken over my life. >As an open platform that can be freely integrated with rather >than a closed corporate silo with a cocktail-straw API, email >is a remnant of a more civilized age rather than a product of >our current one. I'm not sure how to answer this one. >> I have free access to an evergrowing encyclopedia. >Whose quality is determined entirely by which obsessive->compulsive editor has the most free time on their hands. Encylopedia Brittanica (and World Book) had editors too. There you were at the whim of 1 editor per topic. Is Wikipedia's editing really that much worse? It's scope is certainly an order of magnitude larger.