My disaffection for paper print and manuscript has been building, I suppose, from the very first time I ever tried to start a journal. In my second year of Junior High, I tried to start a journal using one of those boxy cassette tape recorders that resembled an oversized tricorder. It had one of those "condenser" microphones, and my brother and I nearly peed our pants banging on that mic and howling neither quite in tune nor exactly on time.
At the end of my graduate work, I spent a bit of time getting better acquainted with UNIX and tag sets and PERL. Many of the skills I acquired at the Electronic Text Center help me on a daily basis. Without question, digital print is much more malleable than paper print. I also think my reading speed in digital print is close to my reading speed for paper texts. I have long ago jettisoned the sentimental notions surrounding the codex book form as "cozy," "comforting," and "beautiful." I think of paper books as enormous wastes of resources—environmentally destructive, informationally inert, and transportationally cumbersome.
Even worse are the popular texts, such as any play by Shakespeare, that are reproduced literally billions of times in many millions of locations. Just how many copies of James Joyce's Ulysses need to be extant?
Given my rejection of paper as a medium, I am not one bit surprised to find it creeping back into my life. I am not surprised by my wanting to finish William Gibson's Spook Country by turning a series of paper leaves.
I even found something that made me smile:
"Meet Archie," said Alberto.
Ten feet above the orange tape outline, the glossy, grayish-white form of a giant squid appeared, about ninety feet in total length, its tentacles undulating gracefully. "Architeuthis," Bobby said. Its one visible eye was the size of an SUV tire. "Skins," Bobby said.
The squid's every surface flooded with light, subcutaneous pixels sliding past in distorted video imagery, stylized kanji, wide eyes of anime characters. It was gorgeous, ridiculous. She laughed, delighted. (55)
I'm enjoying reading this book, this toxically produced print artifact. 
Gibson, William. Spook Country. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2007.
