Kaufman links e-book trend to bookburning, Nazis

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by khalleron

I care because we're giving this ass a platform to spew his hate/filth.

Ideas can be defeated only by other ideas. Not by trying to shut their proponents up or deny them "platform".

[b0ned0me]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

A Statement From Alan Kaufman, author of 'THE ELECTRONIC BOOKBURNING' To My Mobile Read Critics

TLDR. Needs a very good editor indeed to rescue it.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

A Further Response To His Mobile Read Critics From Alan Kaufman, Author of 'The Electronic Bookburning” (Evergreen Review #20)

Too pretentious, didn't read either.

Both mainly serve to illustrate that Mr Orwell really knew what he was talking about

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

[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.

[ardeegee]

Kaufman said:
"If defeated, I'll French with a Kindle"

to which you replied

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

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

Maybe he meant it in a Groundskeeper Willie sense in that he would surrender to the Kindle... but then again, I doubt that his metaphors could be stretched into something that cromulent.

[MaggieScratch]

Originally Posted by khalleron

I care because we're giving this ass a platform to spew his hate/filth.

He obviously came here because he googled himself and found us discussing him. The only way to get him to stop is to ignore him.

I'm now ignoring him. I ask nicely, sugar, honey and molasses, that you do the same.

True, but sometimes it's more fun to mock.

[dmaul1114]

There's some delicious irony in seeing a pretentious luddite post repeatedly on an Internet message board railing against the digital age.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by b0ned0me

Too pretentious, didn't read either.

I read both, and my opinion from the first page of this thread still applies...

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I would have used the word "idiot", but that's just me.

[Elfwreck]

From the Huffington Post: Google Books And Kindles: A Concentration Camp Of Ideas:

When I hear the term Kindle I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit. And when I hear the term "hi-tech" I think not of helpful androids efficiently performing household chores or light-speed rockets gliding seamlessly through space but of the fact that between 1933-45, modern technology was used to perform in ever more efficient ways the mass murder of six million of my people. The instruments of so-called progress, placed in the hands of the modern state, disappeared six million Jewish men, women and children, into a void from which they will never return and in which a majority of them remain forever unidentified. This was done in the name of progress by means of technology for the creation of a better world.

Specifically Kindle-and-Googlebooks focused. More explanation of the books=Jews metaphor; Jews were considered "outmoded" by Nazis.

I'd like to put in a request for anti-ebook bloggers who actually understand how ebooks work, and what can be problematic about them, rather than more of the SmellOBooks crowd who think digitizing somehow causes paper books to burst into flame.

[HansTWN]

Maybe he likes hardcover books because he can sniff the glue?

[Crowl]

Is this guy paid per Godwin or something as his analogy is getting more and more tired each time he trots it out somewhere else, it also seems like if he actually stopped to think about it for a second then his opinion of ebooks should be reversed since making books in digital form in addition to their paper versions increases the chance that they will be read and enjoyed by more people and beyond the copyright issues even this effort by google also has the potential to give less known works a wider audience.

I am sure that some of these idiots complaining about ebooks are convinced that you have to pulp a paper copy of a book for every digital copy as its the only explanation that could cover their campaign to reduce the potential audience for books.

Actually, he does claim that people who prefer ebooks all want to label paper books as inferior tree-killing versions and if that was the general view then he might have some reason to complain, albeit less than those he labels nazis and fascists, but the truth is that if anyone considers environmental benefits of ebooks it is a personal benefit to them rather than some point in a campaign against paper books.

At the end of the day, the best thing for books is to be read by people and it shouldn't matter if its in digital form, paperback, hardback or carved on stone tablets, giving people more chances to read a book should be seen as a good thing.

[Alan Kaufman]

By Alan Kaufman, from today's Huffington Post: KINDLES AND GOOGLE: A CONCENTRATION CAMP OF IDEAS



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-k..._b_380536.html

[Nate the great]

Books and hi-tech

[dmaul1114]

More irony. A luddite writing a column relating to hi tech issues on the Internet.

[Kali Yuga]

Excellent, I look forward to many people pointing out the fundamental irrationalities of your positions. Have fun with that.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Excellent, I look forward to many people pointing out the fundamental irrationalities of your positions. Have fun with that.

LOL. Not such a dim bulb, this Alan.

You do realize, that the only reason he's posting here, is to generate enough hits (irate or not) for his new blog,and thus attract advertisers.