There is a discussion to be had about whether or not ebooks are bad for piece of writing , reading , and bookselling . There is also , patently , adiscussionto be had about whether or not ebook exponent are just like the Nazis .
allow ’s start withSherman Alexie , author of a fair number of popular ( and quite honest ! ) rule book , includingReservation BluesandFlight . He ’s know for his sentience of humor , but he ’s perfectly serious about ebooks — specifically , about how they will destruct lit , forever , or something : His point are as follows :
1.Ebook readersare a threat to privacy
3 . The music industry was crippled by plagiarisation ; therefore the book industry will be stultify by piracy
4 . Once record book are digitized by publisher , they will be stolen ( this part is true )
5 . The “ heart-to-heart source ” culture destroys the concept of possession
The way he throws around the terminus “ open source ” seemingly without knowing what it means , the way he cites uneasiness with how much personal data is hive away on the Kindle ( does he have nightmares about cellphones , too ? ) , and his apparent lack of understanding about the mechanic of buccaneering makes me think he ’s just a bit misinformed about the details of his case , which he obviously feel very strongly about . If he had his fact uncoiled , I ’m not sure his caseful would exchange , and I think he ’d still be able to make good points — this is zeal , not maliciousness .
Which fetch me toAlan Kaufman , poet , novelist , and Almighty of unfortunate analogies :
When I learn the full term Kindle I conceive not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit . And when I listen the condition “ hi - tech ” I opine not of helpful androids efficiently performing household chores or light - pep pill rockets gliding seamlessly through space but of the fact that between 1933 - 45 , modern engineering was used to do in ever more efficient ways the mass murder of six million of my people .
That ’s right , citizenry . Ebook readers are like warfare criminals . It ’s uncanny !
Today ’s hi - tech propagandists tell us that the book is a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree - murdering , space - esurient , inferior variant that society would be good off without . In its spot , they want us to carry around the Uber - Kindle .
The hi - technical school cause to relocate Word of God to Google and replace books with Kindles is , in its substance , a expatriation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration pack of ideas , where every examination of a schoolbook leaves behind a trail , a record , so that curiosity is also tinge with a sense of disquieting fear that some daylight someone in government agency will have intercourse that one had read a particular al-Qur’an or essay .
Crematoria dismount ? in earnest ? What ’s peculiarly vex here is that bury underneath all theGodwin ’s Law - ing , there ’s a existent point : It’sscarythat Amazon can extend to into your pouch and delete a book that you ’ve buy , and , though to a much lesser degree , that they fuck what you ’re read . ( I mean , so does the fashion plate behind the counter at your entirely not - genocidal local book store , right ? Your library ? ) Plus , Kaufman fails to make a preeminence between a government that would have like to have control over all books so it could censor them , and companies that happen to be gaining more control over books because they want to make money .
https://gizmodo.com/why-amazons-power-to-delete-books-is-absolutely-horrify-5319834
And earnestly , do I really have to show this out ? Nazis did n’t glow books because they though paper was wasteful and slow — they burned books to destroy ideas .
Tune in next week , when I ’ll be explain why Steve Jobs is nothing like Pol Pot , and how it would be in poor taste to evoke the Rwandan Genocide to explicate why MiniDisc did n’t succeed . It ’s potential to babble about consumer electronics without tap our century ’s greatest human tragedies . Try it ! [ HuffPoviaTechDirt ]
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