[Xenophon]

That's a rather less-heated response than I expected. I'll intersperse my responses in the text.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

So here's a challenge for Mr. Kaufman. How does your description of the supposed eBook reader match up with me


Dear Xenophon,

I are speaking about a sweeping change that is, as we seek clarification, decimating the world of books and book culture. How any one individual stands in relation to it is, of course, not something that I can answer. How could I? Isn't that something that one must postulate to oneself, and then test to see if true. It's solrt of like the Diamon ring/Sierra Leonne paradigm.
How is someone in New Jersey, innocently buying a diamond ring for their beloved, in any way alligning with monsters who hack off children's arms in Sierra Leoone?

Ah yes, the "blood diamonds" thing. Fungible commodities (which category most certainly includes diamonds) are a fascinating thing. In this case, any particular (natural) diamond might have come from Sierra Leone and so subsidized that mess. Or it might have come from South Africa, or Russia, or... And there's no way to tell. Through the wonders of technology, however, you can now buy a 100% artificial diamond that's higher quality than the natural kind and 1/10th the price -- while simultaneously being absolutely certain that it does not have anything to do with the mess in Sierra Leone. But I digress...

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

How is someone who has decided to aquire a reader participating in the destruction of one of the principle 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?

Now that's a straight-forward and interesting question. I would argue that the decline of the small independent bookstore long predates the rise of any successful electronic book reading device. It seems to me to be driven more by a combination of

• the big-box "category killer" stores like B&N and Borders.
• Catalog shopping becoming far more convenient as a result of the WWW.
• A long-term trend of increase alternatives for leisure-time at affordable prices.

All of which pre-date ebook readers. Of course, other thoughtful folks may disagree. Show me your evidence, and I'll show you mine! Note that without cites to evidence, it's all just claim and counter-claim.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

These are questions that I had hoped people might ask themselves. But apparantly, these are questions that few can bear to consider. Better to either call me a 'dumb-ass' or else, as you do, itemize all the things that you don't do, and wonder: what's this nut talking about?

Insulting people, using over-blown analogies, and failing to respond to reasonable disagreement (I'm not counting any of the more insulting responses in that, btw) are not generally considered an effective approach to getting people to ask themselves different questions. They're much more the hallmarks of the person who prefers ranting to discourse. But, free country, free speech, so approach it however you like. Just don't be surprised when your audience fails to engage as you had hoped.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

So, too, in any totalitarian situation, there are very few who can be singled out as filling the bill of participant in oppression. People only fit as tiny chips in the board of this particular scenario.How is one tiny chip to blame for all this? Well, you know: it reminds me of the film Shoah, Claude Lanzman's 9 hour documentary about the Holocaist. He interviews those who made the railway schedules, those who drove the trains. None of them, in and of themselves, seemed evil. They were just average citizens, performing small acts each day. Their objectives were not to kill anyone. One
made train schedules. The other drove trains back and forth. They weren't even Nazis. Yet, by such small acts they contributed to genocide.

And so did the people who smelted the ore that made the steel that became the rails that the trains rode on. As did the miners who mined that ore. And the surveyors who laid out the rail-lines. And the guy (many people, really) who invented the train. And the fellow who invented the steam engines that made trains possible. And... (OK. I'll stop with the reductio ad absurdum now.) My point is that everything that happens is in some part a consequence of what came before -- even when it preceded the act by a century or more. And I think we can be pretty confident that the guy who putatively invented the steam engine (pick your favorite inventor, but remember that it'll fall somewhere before 1830 or so) bears remarkably little responsibility for the Nazi genocide... yes? We could argue about exactly where to draw the line between "responsible" and "not-responsible," but it seems like a topic on which reasonable people could have wildly different opinions.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

Now, what I am speaking about is not yet genocide. BUT: it is an important station in the road to totalitarianism that in turn could lead to more horror.
What matter how all this occurs, either by way of brownshirt, KGB or corporate moves. All end up in the same result: the shutting down of bookstores, the death of books, the death of privacy, the oipening of ourselves to totalitarian monitoring, the reliquishing of our freedom.

See above about the shutting down of bookstores. As for the death of books, well... I own thousands of books. All legally acquired; all authors appropriately compensated. Some of those books came on paper, and take up far too much space in my house. Others of them came as bits, and take up very little space in my house. The only practical difference for me is that the electronic texts are both less expensive (on average) and more convenient. Yet the authors got a larger royalty (on average) for the electronic books than for the paper ones. This doesn't look like the "death of books" to me. It looks like a chance for a great renaissance in books. I can afford to purchase more, and the authors get a larger absolute royalty from each individual purchase!

The death of privacy, the monitoring, the relinquishing of our freedom? All of those are serious problems that are well worth fighting against, but none of them are inherent in eBooks. Neither are they increased by eBooks generally (although I refused to buy a Kindle in part because I didn't trust Amazon to behave well w.r.t. remote modification) -- devices other than the Kindle are not susceptible to this particular bad behavior (perhaps you were not aware of this important point!). These issues are red herrings in a discussion about eBooks.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

So many have sought to explain away the Orwell incident with Kindle. They've pointed to the legal issues, etc. Virtually everyone has miissed the
main points: that it happened at all and that the books deleted from Kindle were 1984 and Animal Farm.

Sigh. You clearly weren't around here when that happened. You missed all of the "couldn't have happened with a more appropriate book" as a way of showing how messed up Amazon was being. You missed all the folks explaining that the possibility of such things is exactly why they bought something other than a Kindle -- which is the only device to date on which such remote deletions is possible. (I don't count the B&N nook yet, because it's so new that we really don't know whether or not B&N could pull a similar bone-headed maneuver.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

They can't see the forest for the trees. You too are not able to see the forest for the trees. The trees are that device in your hand. To see the forest, please walk around your city or town and note these things.
The number of bookstores that have closed.

Repeat after me: "Correlation is not causation. Correlation is not causation. ..."
Or, if you want to be snooty about it, that particular logical fallacy is also known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Case not proven, even by the very lax standards of high-school debate.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

The fact that everywhere you look people are hunched frowning over screens. That people are talking to others on cell phones while ignoring those around them. That people are whipping out devices to check their messages constantly.

You mean the people who are voluntarily communicating with others at times and places of their choice? And you were complaining about totalitarianism? Hello??? Surely people should be free to make their own decisions about such things. Where do you get off deciding that their choices are wrong?

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

Take it all in and ask yourself: what's going on here? Where is everyone? Why are so many human beings spending all their time on these machines? What is this? How did life come to be this way?

What does this all mean?

Perhaps it means that you've missed something that they've seen.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

Perhaps there's some truth to the fact that these machines increasingly are controlling us, rather than the other way around. And that increasingly we are dissapearing through the screens into some non-existent illusion in which
our sense of humanity erodes and weakens.

Just as the telephone cause our sense of humanity to erode and weaken. As did the telegraph. And the lightning speed of world travel around 1850. All of which are complaints and claims of looming disaster that were made at the time. What's your evidence? A strong claim like that requires strong evidence, so show us some!

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

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? And wonder: isn't that in fact the
very FIRST place that totalitarian systems seek to gain a foothold, and then complete control? Wasn't that true of the Church? Wasn't it true of National Socialism? Isn't it true of Communism?

Decimate? That's an extremely debatable position. My view is that you are off-target in blaming eBooks and eBook readers for the particular social ills that you seem to be exercised about. You disagree. If you want to have that part of the discussion, I'd be happy to. With actual references and facts, even. Always assuming that you are interested in listening, responding, and learning. I will, if you will...

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

Npw, it has become true of Hi-Tech. Hi-Tech may not even be aware that the ultimate endgame is totalitarianism. But that dosen't matter. The moment they mobilize totalitarian effots, like now, in their effort to eliminate and control the book, they stand alligned with the worst evils on earth.

And we must ask ourselves, each one, in the name of human freedom, where we stand in relation to that.

Sincerely,
Alan

Hmmmm... Were you aware that Hi-Tech is chock-full of people with strong libertarian tendencies? You know, the ones who are ready to push back against many of the (real) bad trends that you mention? Who routinely push back against government intrusiveness, even when it's not convenient to do so?

Aw heck, I'm out of steam and out of time. Consider this an invitation to discuss the substance of these issues. But stick to politeness and non-attacking language, please.

Xenophon