The best things in Neal Stephenson's Reamde are the aesthetic coalitions that emerge in his virtual world "The Forces Of Brightness" and "The Earthtone Coalition". As soon as you read that, you see those opposing tendencies everywhere.
Tom and I were talking this morning about a new thing we're trying to push out of Newspaper Club - a way to let people easily transfer their individual reading from screen to newspaper. We realised that some people instinctively want to do that - they want to materialise stuff. And some instinctively don't - they want all their stuff to evanesce (as Adam puts it). And you can't really predict who will be drawn to what. Of course it's a sweeping generalisation, but that feels like an aesthetic divide as big and clear as FOB v EC.
Anyway.