We can also attribute the lack of reading to the American frontier mentality that equated reading with effete living and not with the macho men and pioneer women who tamed the West. Finally, television has delivered a significant blow to the printed word. Watching television is easier and more enjoyable to many, though perhaps less imagina- tive than reading. Will the computer, perhaps, by combining the printed word and tech- nology, lead to increased reading, if not of great literature (who wants to sit at a monitor and read Shakespeare's plays?), then of the plethora of material careering down the in- formation superhighway?