[catsittingstill]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

A Further Response To His Mobile Read Critics From Alan Kaufman, Author of 'The Electronic Bookburning” (Evergreen Review #20)
http://evergreenreview.com/120/elect...k-burning.html


STATEMENT:

Hi-tech does not increase your brain capacity: it merely exercizes your thumbs.

(snip)

So, I'd like to extend the following invite to any on this site. Lets thumbwrestle for three shirtless private rounds in an alley of my choice, and see who's left victorious: my 6'2”, 200 pound, tattooed, 57 year old military veteran Bronx-born poetry writing streetfighting ass or your nerdy and ignorant Silicon Folly digitized selves.

I'm sorry; I'm not following how the strength of your body relates to the strength of your arguments; could you go over that again? With less metaphor?

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

If defeated, I'll French with a Kindle

I would actually prefer that you don't. Someone who equates electronic books with instruments of genocide of his people, and who believes that the strength of his body relates to the strength of his arguments, might be inclined to damage a Kindle--which would be rather a pity because Kindles are kind of neat, and if you don't like it, someone else can always use it.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

but if you go down, you must not only toss your device but read in full classics that I'll list, ranging from Marcus Aurelius, Sophocles, Homer and the Old Testament to Flaubert, Tolstoy, Babel, Stendahl, Proust and George Eliot, to name but a few.

All of which are available as e-books.

I will just note that while you see technology as enslaving men, I am, like more than half the population, not a man. And I see technology as liberating me--liberating me from a lifetime of grubbing for roots in the dirt, a lifetime of being abused, robbed, beaten and raped by men who are stronger than I am, in a world where the strength of one's body is the limit of the available power, a lifetime of screaming my way through childbirth after childbirth to produce babies that die before the age of five.

You don't like that? *Seriously?* You are a nutbar.

I totally agree that the persecution and murder of the Jews is an atrocity that stains every person and institution that took part, or even existed at the time and didn't try to stop it, it is the culmination of a series of pogroms that go all the way back to the First Crusade, and everyone who took part used the best technology available to them to do the job, whether that was iron swords and wheeled carts or tanks and guns. That doesn't make technology evil--it makes murderers evil.

If you really don't like technology, you could always try living somewhere with a lower technological level. Sub-Saharan Africa pops to mind. Perhaps there everyone will treat each other fairly and accord books and literature the respect they truly deserve.