I think what Derrida is saying in “Paper or Me, You Know…” is a continuation of what he argued about the book to come. Paper isn’t dead, just like the book isn’t dead. When someone is an author, a writer, a typist, anything, they are out to get control of “the screen.” A writer puts on paper what he wants you to read in the order he wishes it to be read and this is not a concept that changes with an emergence of new formats and media as the world goes “paperless.” Sure, there are varying degrees of importance of a sheet of paper, from toilet paper to a signed and notarized business document, but paper is still a part of our world, and will remain so long after sheets made from trees are gone. Just the computer screen serves as our paper, because even though we can layer windows on top of one another, we are still only reading one side of one page in one dimension. Even if the text is in strange format, that does not mean that it is doing something that cannot be done on paper.
The book House of Leaves is a great example of an author wanting to control the screen that is paper. Text runs up and down the page, goes wherever it can, with this method used as a device to manipulate the readers to do things they had never had to do before with a book and thereby flexing the muscles paper has now and will have once every word you read will be linked to something beyond it. Even if it is linked to thousands of things, one can only see them one at a time, so in essence all new technology allows us to do is sift through information faster, but not in any manner different from looking at paper.
