The notion of there being no hard copies of books is scary. "Fahrenheit 451" without the fire. It too easily opens up the possibility of tampering (that happens with printed books at times), and the internet could easily become a 'controlled medium'. I agree that having the encyclopaedia or "Collected Works of Shakespeare" on a flash drive is handy and certainly more portable. But then, I wonder how easy it would have been to burn all books if all it took to do that was completely crash the internet.