More people will be reading classics. People are bargain-hunting cheapskates. Nearly every "classic" published before, say, World War II is available to you right now, instantly and free. As Amazon's holiday sales demonstrate, people gravitate to free books. And classics tend to be far better and more valuable to readers than your everyday random free book. The rise in eBook reading, combined with the freeness of classic works, will restore the reading of classics.

You can read Common Sense by TV commentator Glenn Beck for $12, or you can read Common Sense written by Thomas Paine for free. One book is worthless, and the other is a national treasure. But the pricing doesn't reflect that.

If more people read classics written by geniuses instead of trash written by self-aggrandizing TV talking heads, how would that change the public discourse?

School content will be free. They're always telling us that the solution to our public education system is that we're not throwing enough money at schools. Meanwhile, textbooks tend to be politicized, written-by-committee garbage that serve mainly to turn kids off of reading and cost a small fortune.

On one hand, you have pricey, generic and unreadable textbooks. On the other, you have all of the knowledge known to man -- much of it incredibly engaging and exciting to readers -- for no cost. Hmmmm. Which to choose?