There are a whole lot of reasons to be very happy that our brains are able to adapt and adapt so readily because we do strengthen and become more efficient at things we do a lot of in changed ways of thinking that we might need.

By putting the means of production into the hands of the masses but withholding from those same masses any ownership over the product of their work, Web 2.0 provides an incredibly efficient mechanism to harvest the economic value of the free labor provided by the very, very many and concentrate it into the hands of the very, very few.

You can take a book to the beach without worrying about sand getting in its works. You can take it to bed without being nervous about it falling to the floor should you nod off. You can spill coffee on it. You can sit on it. You can put it down on a table, open to the page you're reading, and when you pick it up a few days later it will still be exactly as you left it. You never have to be concerned about plugging a book into an outlet or having its battery die.

It's interesting to think about how the book changed us.

I think what the book did in addition to its practical uses, is it gave us a more attentive way of thinking.

The only thing going on is the progression of words and sentences across page after page and so suddenly we see this immersive kind of very attentive thinking, whether you are paying attention to a story or to an argument, or whatever. And what we know about the brain is the brain adapts to these types of tools.

As soon as you introduce the mechanical clock, you get a radically different view of time. Suddenly, it's not a flow; it's a series of discreet, precisely measurable units, seconds, minutes, hours, and so forth.