There is a sometimes comforting tendency to reduce something that began as words on a screen and ended as words on a screen to simply those, phosphorescent letters glowing in a dark room until powered down for bedtime, but this is a deceptive trap analogous to reducing the contents of a book to its front and back jacket design or a sandwich to the two slices of bread enclosing its filling. When things head south it feels better to think that you're just composting two moldy loaf heels or recycling a piece of cardboard or replacing one arbitrary screen full of words with another selection of the infinite possibilities, but that's just a mental trick. A life is found between those pages; the world sits between those two buttered slices of bread, on a bed of lettuce. If you ignore them, you lose it all, consigning yourself to a superficial experience of donuts with the jelly filling siphoned out and waxy candy bars lacking their chewy nougat centre.

(These are bad examples for this gourmand case, but we work with what we know.)

We will inescapably have all the time in the world for empty donuts and sandwiches, books and screens devoid of text. But until then, seemingly selfish dismay that their substance has been taken from us, that we weren't done with it yet, is an appropriate response.