Kaufman links e-book trend to bookburning, Nazis

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Jack Tingle

That's not how I read it. It seems to me to be a defense of paper books as some kind of mystical, ensouled entities. In effect, he accuses anyone who likes ebooks of zombifying these mystic entities by transmogrifying them into soulless ebooks, where they tragically reside in a sort of digital purgatory, corrupting the souls of all who read them. Exactly how the Nazis come in, I'm not sure, but he seems to equate ebook publishers with the death camp guards. Or something.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

It really is a slap in the face of his father that he is equating a simple technological advance, that makes content more easily available to many people, to the horror that the Nazis inflicted on the Jews. Nazis didn't burn the books because they were beautiful, they wanted to ban the content. Just the opposite of what is happening now. Additionally, I am sure in a few years ebooks will be aesthetically just as pleasing as high quality pbooks are now. The author's father will turn over in his grave reading his son's article.

The whole idea seems so crazy that I can only think:

a.)He is a troll who made this whole thing up to have a good laugh. That would be the utmost in bad taste, though.
b.)This is part of a last-ditch desperate efforts by some publishers to save their old business model.

[catsittingstill]

books have become simply another vehicle, along with the Washing Machine and the iPod, for generating capital.

What kind of a tech-bashing, frothing-at-the-mouth, Luddite do you have to be to hate washing machines?

Maybe he should do his own laundry for a while. He could do it by hand for a week, and then see if he would like to switch to a washing machine.

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Well, since you aren't old enough to have invented the hobo (or Dennis the Menace) "bag on a stick" I suppose you invented the drug package.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bindle

ardeegee, I saw that. The Bindle reading device is a different thing. Many words have multiple meanings. But good catch!

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

It really is a slap in the face of his father that he is equating a simple technological advance, that makes content more easily available to many people, to the horror that the Nazis inflicted on the Jews. Nazis didn't burn the books because they were beautiful, they wanted to ban the content. Just the opposite of what is happening now. Additionally, I am sure in a few years ebooks will be aesthetically just as pleasing as high quality pbooks are now. The author's father will turn over in his grave reading his son's article.

The whole idea seems so crazy that I can only think:

a.)He is a troll who made this whole thing up to have a good laugh. That would be the utmost in bad taste, though.
b.)This is part of a last-ditch desperate efforts by some publishers to save their old business model.

Good comments, sir. No, Kaufman is not a troll, he wrote that essay for the Evergreen Review website and he meant every word of it. And yes, it was in poor taste, and prob his dad is quite sad in Heaven to see what his son wrote. It was really a tasteless piece of crapola.

[danbloom]

btw, I edited, as a thought exercise only, Kaufman's piece to take out all the strange Holocaust themes, which make no sense there, and just belittle his piece, and now it reads like this:

http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/1...n-kaufman.html

The piece still reads like an insane attack on E-books and E-reading, and a crazy defense of paper bookstores and paper books, it still makes very little sense, but at least now it does have the ugly crapola he put in their the first time. read it a second time now. It is still a hill of beans, but more accessible now, even though most of us disagree with it.

[Solicitous]

As soon as he started swearing by using the F-word (and no it wasn't a quote from another source) I stopped reading with interest.

To answer simply the fact of bookshops closing, two points spring to mind, globalisation and supply-chain management. Simple, companies either move with the times or will eventually miss out and close shop.

This made me chuckle

The world is moving to embrace the electronic media as its principle mode of expression. The human has opted for the machine, and its ghosts, over the haptic companionship and didactic embodiment of the physical book. And though this development seems inevitable yet I cannot and will not accept it.

On one hand he is saying he wont accept it, on the other he posted his essay on a webpage which I was able to view free of charge, thus in turn almost killing off books as now I don't need to buy a book to read his essay. He is right though, we are opting for electronic media as a way of moving forward. IMHO much like the way we opted for phone over face-to-face, email over letters, radio over newspaper. Didn't kill any of the old ways off, just introduced new ways for us as humans to communicate.

Waste of time reading it, can someone give me my 5 min of life back?

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

Waste of time reading it, can someone give me my 5 minutes of life back?

Well said, Solicitous.

[Xerxes]

Godwin's Law!

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Xerxes

Godwin's Law!

Hmm... God wins?

[recycledelectron]

One thing nobody has considered: EMP (I know this is almost off topic, but it adds to the evils of our ebooks.) A few EMP bombs, as described in "One Second After" by William Forstchen could wipe out all the ebooks in the USA. It would be difficult to rebuild after an attack that took out all our books.

With DRM servers, it would only require hacking a dozen server systems world wide to crash most ebooks. Amazon, B&N, Sony, etc. A cyber-attack could render most books in the western world unradable. Am I the only one who was screwed when Lotus declared bankruptcy, and shut down their servers so nobody could reinstall 1-2-3?

OTOH, it would be great while rebuilding to have every book (over a certain age) ever printed in a single hand-held device. That's been my goal for many years. Maybe we can even get those who write users manuals and service manuals to agree on a format, add a wiki section (so it's understandable) and open them all up to dowloading. Then, we could add in product and service manuals to our TEOTWAKI ebook reader.

Andy

[DawnFalcon]

Er, no. It's only with the Amazon system that your books can be remotely revoked.

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by [B

recycledelectron[/B];643116]One thing nobody has considered: EMP (I know this is almost off topic, but it adds to the evils of our ebooks.) A few EMP bombs, as described in "One Second After" by William Forstchen could wipe out all the ebooks in the USA. It would be difficult to rebuild after an attack that took out all our books.

With DRM servers, it would only require hacking a dozen server systems world wide to crash most ebooks. Amazon, B&N, Sony, etc. A cyber-attack could render most books in the [W]estern world unradable. Am I the only one who was screwed when Lotus declared bankruptcy, and shut down their servers so nobody could reinstall 1-2-3?

Andy, this is a good point, too. Even though offtopic a bit. Yes, in the future, if climate change does us in, and billions must move north to live in "polar cities" in northern areas of the world, to find food and refuge as climate refugees in say year 2500 or so, maybe sooner, and the entire power grid goes down, what then? Indeed, what then? A few paper books might be worth preserving: the Bible, maybe, and a few other volumes of biology and philosophy and medical advice. Yes?

You raised an alarmist yet very important and REAL point. And what about hacker attacks from enemy countries? China could wipe out every Ebook on the North American continent in seconds if they decided to. ouch!

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

I find his quote extremely offensive. Comparing ebooks to Hitler and his insanity?

I think these days comparing things or people to Hitler or Nazis is a pretty common shock statement/title. There is so much on line these days to attract attention people say and write stuff like this. Any traffic, positive comments or flames drive traffic which means more add revenue.

BOb

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by danbloom

Andy, this is a good point, too. Even though offtopic a bit. Yes, in the future, if climate change does us in, and billions must move north to live in "polar cities" in northern areas of the world, to find food and refuge as climate refugees in say year 2500 or so, maybe sooner, and the entire power grid goes down, what then?

True, at least you can burn paper books for warmth

[danbloom]

DawnFalcon, good gallows humour!

re: "True, at least you can burn paper books for warmth !'