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But does access to more material make us more ''literate''? ''I actually think the evidence shows that most of our children are more literate, if you think of the definition 'literacy' as hugely more complex than it was 30 or 40 years ago and the different sorts of literacies that everyone has to have,'' says Ewing

''At one point of time, if you could sign your name you were 'literate' - and then it was actually a very good measure. Later, if you could do a, say, primary school level of schooling, that was considered to be literacy. Today, I'd say, it's being able to interact with and participate in contemporary society, and in most workplaces these days that takes in having some element of computer literacy.''

BUT many worry that screen-based reading is already changing the way we read for the worse, playing to what has been called the Google generation, people with short attention spans who are prone to distraction and turn into ''skimmers''

''Wide reading, particularly wide reading out of school, has a direct correlation with academic success.''

nd amid all the gloom and doomsaying, it seems we're still doing plenty of that.