Desiring Books

Jill Hurst-Wahl attended the third Iconic Books Symposium and wonders about the social effects of iconic books on her blog, Digitization 101:

Does the iconic value of the book keep us tied to this medium more than we should be? Is our move toward other ways of transmitting information being inhibited by our connection to the book as a representation of knowledge?

My questions are: What are the stakes that people (and companies and universities and governments and religions) have in material books? And what are the stakes that people (and companies and universities and governments and religions) have in electronic texts?