The Web giveth, and the Web taketh away. For nearly four years, this column — which ends today — has chronicled what has been lost and gained by the rapid digitization of virtually all cultural artifacts and experiences. I’ve taken a mixed view of the open, free Web. At the start, the Web seemed like a cross between a candy superstore and a freshly unearthed civilization on Neptune. The cultural flora that were growing in the Web’s nooks and crannies needed classification. What is a YouTube video? What’s a Wikipedia entry? What’s a tweet? But I’ve had to acknowledge the widespread worry that the Web cheapens content, and maybe even culture. The Web has been a source of real disorientation in the American publishing, film, music and TV businesses.

So it surprised me when a plausible alternative to the Web didn’t come from traditional media, which was so affronted by it, but from the tech world. When the iPhone first appeared, followed by the Kindle and then the iPad, it became clear that e-books and apps provided a way to siphon the resources of the Internet to individuals, who could now sample that energy without having to be vulnerable to the Web’s commercialism. That was an enormous breakthrough. Anyone who’s honest with herself knows that the Web stopped being a great place for consumers of culture a year or two ago. You think you’re reading the Web these days, but it’s reading you — gathering data on you, trying to sell you stuff, pushing you to other links. On the Web, reading is shopping. And sometimes you don’t want to shop.

The Kindle in particular brought me the first moment of peace from Web noise that I’d had in a long time. True, I thought I loved the Web noise when the only alternative was to recede into analog culture — but I have adored the silence I’ve found on the Kindle.