From The Influence of the Internet on Literature:
It took a whole century for the printed book to develop a form of its own that was no longer dominated by the aesthetic traditions of the medieval manuscript. It was in the 16th century Italy that the format of the printed book emerged from the experimental and transitional phase and found a basic stability of form that lasted for the next three centuries. By the end of the 19th century the old manual processes had been replaced by mechanical production with power-driven machinery. (Chaytor, Clancy, Spender, Eisenstein, Butler) It has taken just three years, since the release of Netscape, for tens of millions of people to become involved with the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web may never develop a distinct form, but will continually reinvent itself.
