Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman
So is that, then, the chief purpose of this website: to swear facistic allegiance to Sciene?
Is this like your little Nuremberg Rally for e-book users to celebrate the electronic Triumph of the Shill?
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Mr. Kaufman,
As a regular reader and fan of the Huffington Post, it gives me no pleasure to say that the site is “hit-and miss when it comes to matters of science." Some of the science articles that appear on the Huffington site are excellent. It is unfortunate but true, however, that others leave a great deal to be desired.
That being said; I am neither the spokesperson nor the apologist for what you have chosen to label MOBILE SLEAZE, and I certainly don’t set the agenda for anyone here. In addition, to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never organized a Nuremberg Rally for the purpose of motivating the masses to swear fascistic allegiance to Prometheus.
I haven’t read any of your poetry, although I plan to remedy that in the near future. From your creative and eloquent style of writing here and elsewhere on the web, I imagine that when you aren’t busy accusing people who embrace new technologies of being Nazi sympathizers, your writings are quite enjoyable.
I did read the original article that sparked this whole debate, and quite frankly, I sympathize with much of what you say, and believe you raise some valid concerns, but in the final analysis, I believe the brunt of your anger is largely misdirected.
That neighborhood bookstores are closing their doors all over the country is indeed sad, and probably has been exacerbated by the arrival of e-texts and e-readers, but it certainly didn’t start with them. The elements that have contributed to this perfect storm are many and varied, old and new. The overall decline of reading can most probably be traced to the advent of radio and later TV. The first direct attack on mom and pop bookstores can no doubt be traced to the arrival of the big bookstore chains, which, via their homogenization of stock, most likely had a more negative impact of what books were available than did the advent of television or radio. Then, of course, there’s the economic crash, which only further aggravated the already insecure fiscal position of the average citizen in this country who had been suffering for years under stagnant wages and an economic system that saw no crime in redistributing wages to the upper tiers of society with ever-increasing rapidity.
But that you would refer to the decline in physical book sales as a new holocaust and refer to books as the new Jews is nothing short of bizarre. For a gentile like me to say what I am about to say to someone of your heritage borders on the absurd, but here it is:
1) To compare declining book sales to the wholesale slaughter of six million Jews and untold numbers of Gypsies, homosexuals, and others cheapens the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
2) Jews are the new Jews. Unfortunately, anti-Semitism never died, and throughout the world attacks upon individuals and groups based on ethnicity still occur with alarming frequency.
In the article, you raised concerns about privacy. These concerns are valid, and have been discussed here and elsewhere. There are no easy answers, but the problem is hardly limited to e-readers. These days, in the U.S., the simple act of checking out certain books from the library can land you on a Homeland Security watch list. Buy those same books with a credit card and an electronic trail of your reading habits has been firmly established.
The silver lining in all of this is that once again the classics are being read, via the uploading of e-text versions to places like Project Gutenberg, and here at MobileRead via the hard work of individual members who not only upload classics, but also actively encourage reading and discussion of classical literature. In addition, many valuable books that in former days couldn’t find publishers because of their limited mass appeal are finding new life on the Internet. New and worthy authors who would otherwise fall by the wayside are finding audiences through independent e-publishing. More and more people are turning off their TV sets and turning on their readers. Online communities are expanding the human family by bringing people together from around the world. Quite a bit of good has come out of all this, if you open your eyes to see it.