A number of things indicate the evident persistence of book culture (or print culture) in the "modern culture" that Hardison is discussing. First, I suspect that such claims about media shift will repeat structurally past shifts. The growth of print culture and the literary marketplace in the eighteenth century, at a point when movable type was no longer a new technology, led to a preservation, even retrenchment of oral and manuscript culture which is was supposed to displace. Second, the use of terminology itself indicates the ways that the culture of the book will persistent, even if books themselves no longer were a central technological form for the production and distribution of culture. The terms "blog culture" and "blogosphere" are derived from terms like "print culture" and "public sphere," both of which have definitive origins in explanations of the effects of another supposed media shift from oral/manuscript to print.

Further, I (blogger number 2) have trouble with the use of the term "culture" as something all inclusive. My parents, avid Examiner readers, would not consider their "culture" to be book-centered, and certainly will not move into a blog-centered culture.