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Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman
... How is someone who has decided to aquire (sic) a reader participating in the destruction of one of the principle (sic) legs on which our civilization stands: books and bookstores? And how would that, in turn, lead to the sort of totalitarian condition that I forsee (sic) ? These are questions that I had hoped people might ask themselves.
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We did. And came up with the answer. Which is: not at all.
You think a different answer is correct. For the third, or fourth? time--please explain why AND GIVE EVIDENCE.
Indeed, as we have said repeatedly, we love books, have large collections, read them every chance we get. By your lights, this is as if someone you thought wrote Nazi death train schedules by day, smuggled Jews to safety by night. If you thought this through, you would find it confusing. It might even occur to you to re-think whether we are, in fact, writing Nazi train schedules at all.
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.... wonder: what's this nut talking about?
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No. No, we don't wonder what you're talking about anymore. You think e-books are bad. We've got that.
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....So many have sought to explain away the Orwell incident with Kindle. They've pointed to the legal issues, etc. Virtually everyone has miissed (sic) the main points: that it happened at all and that the books deleted from Kindle were 1984 and Animal Farm.
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No, sweetie. Nobody missed the irony. Thanks anyway for pointing it out, though. We're very proud of you.
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Why are so many human beings spending all their time on these machines?
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Because the machines are ways to communicate, and there are human beings on the other end. You can't see them, but they're there. Kind of like a book, except that for many of the machines, the communication is two-way.
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And lastly, ask yourself: what right do these people at Amazon and Google have to come in as they have and decimate one of the most precious areas of human life: the book and book culture?
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Decimate books? Amazon makes books available quickly and cheaply, which means even poor people can afford books.
I guess that could be a problem for some people, that Amazon makes books inexpensive and easy to get, and furthermore that so much of the world's great literature is available as e-books for free. That the literacy that once would have been the exclusive province of the leisure class is now available to any grimy-handed mechanic or farmer or janitor or secretary who is interested.