Every day at my job I helped people just barely survive
Let me try to shed light on the other side of the argument. Based on the author's experience, it looks like what is really necessary for this day and age is a public browsing center with enough resources to teach computer "illiterates"   [for a lack of a better word] how to find what they want in the digital world. NOT a library per se...now you might ask what the difference is : having a public library implies money has to spent on buying and managing books- which can be prohibitively expensive.