Alliance for Wild Ethics || The Perceptual Implications of Gaia || Copyright © David Abram
The entire range of living matter on Earth, from whales to viruses, and from oaks to algae, could be regarded as constituting a single living entity, capable of manipulating the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts

There are several essays (find more here) and a very good comparison of books with digital media and oral culture:

Literate culture (the layer of society implicitly informed by books, newspapers, and magazines) enables an exchange of tales and insights from diverse times and places. Reading is a wonderful kind of experience, yet it is necessarily abstract relative to our direct, sensory encounters in the immediacy of our locale. Indeed, by mingling notions drawn from divergent eras and cultures, literate discourse instills a useful distance, and detachment, from our immediate environment. In this sense, literate culture is inherently cosmopolitan.

Read on.