There an article by Umberto Eco there, about the death of the printed book.

The last paragraphs are especially interesting (to me, at least):

Indeed, in a role-play game one could rewrite Waterloo such that Grouchy arrived with his men to rescue Napoleon. But the tragic beauty of Hugo's Waterloo is that the readers feel that things happen independently of their wishes. The charm of tragic literature is that we feel that its heroes could have escaped their fate but they do not succeed because of their weakness, their pride, or their blindness.

[...]

There are books that we cannot re-write because their function is to teach us about necessity, and only if they are respected such as they are can they provide us with such wisdom. Their repressive lesson is indispensable for reaching a higher state of intellectual and moral freedom.

I wish I couldn't point to this thread...

...But I have been clobbered by hubris once more, alas!

PS: dead link? Or is it an Ecovian ironic commentary on the death of the electronic word?