Hi Steve,

1. The gradual subsumption of the analogue world into the digital world:
   I was listening to a podcast over the weekend and the presenters (qualified historians) bemoaned what we are leaving behind for future generations. They have source material on paper to work with. Will the servers of Facebook, Google et al. be available to researchers in centuries to come? I am not so sure. I distrust the availability of stuff on the Internet. As a consequence, I avoid anything streamed (except radio, which has always been streamed ) and I buy on physical media whenever I can. I, at least, will leave something behind for future generations to appreciate, assuming the media survives. The argument of waste can also be made against me.
   I, too, love wandering around old bookshops and looking at old books and maps from years gone by. What will our grandchildren have? Kindle repositories? There are sites dotted across the Internet which strive to keep abandoned software available. These sites straddle legality. I see them as skips/dumpsters of the digital era. While taking contents from a skip is illegal, often the owners don't mind. That being said, it is a poor substitute to what we have. And will they be around in the years to come?

 2. The quality of material available:
 In a good bookshop, library etc. care, effort and much investment have been put into them to present good quality material. Libraries are a part of the social contract between the state and her citizens and it is in the interest of both that people read widely. Bookshops are commercial enterprises and it is in their interest that people read widely. The Internet, like a large, sprawling city, has sites which have a social contract and makes good material available but you have to go look for it. I would regard this very site as one such example — an example between enterprise and library. There is also a lot of information of dubious quality, poorly-informed opinion and prolefeed, to put it mildly online. One must take the good with the bad.
 That being said, there are sites like the Andy Warren's library as mentioned above. I, personally, love to meander around TVTropes, Wikipedia, StumbleUpon, Snopes, the cartographic agencies of various countries and so on. These sites will bring you to places that you hadn't expected to go and I can spend ages browsing around. Behind the paywalls of many newspapers, there is also much of interest to read.