Kaufman links e-book trend to bookburning, Nazis

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Trolls have to eat, too. And why shouldn't we have a little harmless fun with him?

I don't know about Mr. Kaufman; but I often wonder if some posters who are regarded as 'trolls' may not actually be in need of help rather than ridicule.

I hope that those who need it get it, because they mostly seem to be living very unhappy lives.

[desertgrandma]

This is the price you pay for "freedom of speech" Ignorant ramblings that make you feel like you've just walked thru a backed up sewer..

I'm done.

C'mon "ignore that thread" option!!!

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

But I don't understand how you can have read what you've read in my Huffington Post piece about the history of Nazi Genicide and destruction of the PHYSICAL book, and still not understand why your ownership and advocacy of a machine created to displace the book as a cultural artifact is a kind of cultural crime and prefigures a totalitarian condition that could lead to genocide. Why is it so impossible for you to grasp that what you are engaging in, doing, is destroying the world of books, one of the principal pillars upon which decent society has rested, and you are replacing what you destroy with a kind of nihilistic apathetic cult of convenience. Further, you are willing to trade away your privacy and individual freedom by subsidizing an electronic fake book linked to networks that keep track of what you read. Why is it so hard to grasp that wharever benefit you believe accrues for you from these machines is rubbish compared to the cultural traditions and human freedoms that you are blithely trampling on. I don't understand how you don't see that and must conclude that there is something fundamentally changed in you as the result of your immersion in the culture of these soul-destroying gadgets. They have wounded your moral perception, your abiility to weigh and measure consequences. You and your fellow e-bookers and high-techers are guilty. I accuse you all of gross cultural irresponsability that has lead to the imminent downfall of the book iindustry and the desruction of book culture and I regard it as little less than an economic and cultural war crime of sorts, no less than any Nazi who burned a book. For like him, you are thoughtless, ignorant of history and its consequences and clueless as to the horrors that you are inviting into our lives by destroying the sacred book.

Nazi Germany destroyed lives and almost an entire culture. Not buying books printed on paper kills no one. It does not destroy cultural artifacts, it just does not purchace them.

I think that the problem of communication that exists here is in the definition of "book." Your position, I think, is that a "book" is something printed on paper that has a physical presence that can be measured in three dimensional space.

My definition of "book" is something that consists of a narrative in words that can be read (not viewed) that takes up a certain length of my time to read. Shorter narratives of the same qualification are "stories."

I do not agree with you that the use of electronic media to read equates with genocide or cultural destruction. It is the next phase of evolution of reading and conveyance of thought and information. These are, of course my opinion and I do not require that you change your mind to fit my opinion in order to consider you to be a fellow human worthy of consideration.

That would be Nazi-like behavior, if you ask me.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I don't know about Mr. Kaufman; but I often wonder if some posters who are regarded as 'trolls' may not actually be in need of help rather than ridicule.

I think some of the trolls here are genuinely mentally ill (like a certain "new word" addicted one that I'm guilty of ridiculing) but Kaufman? I think he's just some jerk with a massive ego who has no idea how little he actually knows about the technology he is condemning.

[Moejoe]

Kaufman's analogies are not only an insult to people who like electronic books, but almost all Europeans in one form or another, especially those who fought against or were subjugated to the fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. What he also doesn't seem to grasp is that the internet and digital is inherently non-fascist, and it can never be as long as it's in the hands of 'we' the people and we the people copy and disseminate infomation freely to one another. You can't burn a digital book unless you give governments and corporations control of the net....something that the book producers (his oh so lauded guardians of culture) would love to see.

[ardeegee]

After reading some of Kaufman's rants on another forum just now:

http://www.lisnews.org/provocative_e...c_book_burning

I have to amend my earlier post-- he's mentally ill.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

From Alan Kaufman
Will someone on MOBILE SLEAZE please, please, please respond to any of the points I've addressed in any of the essays, whether here or on Huff Post or by skywriting airplane.

You don't deserve it, but here goes.

Your position is not based on reason, or rational argument; there is little indication you are interested in a critical analysis or interpretation of the role of technology in reading, or in society in general. Instead you constantly push the "Nazi button" like a Skinnerian pigeon and presume your readers will collapse into a blubbering heap, begging to be protected from the "Big Bad."

(For your reference: people have invoked Nazism in trivial manners and matters for almost the entire history of the Internet. By now, it's not viewed as a serious position, nor does it even have any shock value; it's a joke. Hence, even Jewish people are decidedly unmoved by, or openly offended by, your obsessive attempts to associate ebooks with Nazism.)

From what I can tell, your positions appear to be:

1. Technology is evil by association with Nazism and Nazi ideology.
2. Technology is inherently evil.
3. Selected specific aspects of ebooks are detrimental.
4. Proponents of ebooks in fact "hate books." The Nazis also hated books; therefore ebooks are evil.

The first point is clearly fallacious. Technology and innovation long pre-dated Nazi ideology; it's patently obvious that, for example, Nazi scientists were absorbed into the US in spite of the moral quandaries or potential political fallout because Americans already valued their abilities (and recognized the Soviets would exploit those abilities, if the US did not).

More to the point, "Evil" is not a contagious condition, nor is an idea evil based on the sole criteria that "the Nazis admired and/or utilized it." If Hitler declared support for the gold standard, this association is insufficient to cause or prove that "the gold standard is evil." Conversely, one does not need to know that "the Nazis were racists" in order to make a moral judgment of racism and racist acts.

As to 2., the evidence is abundantly clear that this is not the case. Tools are morally neutral; it's the actions a human being performs with the tool that has a moral dimension. A knife is not inherently good ("I use knives to eat my food") or evil ("I use knives to torture and kill people"). It doesn't matter if I try to torture you with a thumb-screw or a stun gun; the moral issue is my intent and/or the results ("causation of pain"). Physical objects are not moral agents and thus do not have intentions, duties or necessarily produce specific ethical consequences. It's the person who uses the tool who is the proper subject of a moral judgment.

On a related note, you present the claim that the Nazis proposed to eliminate the Jews because of a technology-based mindset, e.g. Jews were "obsolete" and thus ought to be eliminated. I don't style myself as an expert on the Holocaust -- nor am I interested in a huge debate on the topic -- but I'm going to take a wild guess that a few millennia of European anti-semitism might be regarded as a far more critical motivation. And again, numerous other mass-murders were not fostered by pro-technology ideologies, or even technological advances. Cf. Mithradates' attack and purge of Romans (political and ethnic in origin, and decidedly low-tech); the Armenian genocide during WWI (ethnic in origin, low-tech in implementation); the Khmer Rouge massacres (the KR was trying to revert Cambodia to a lower-tech rural/agrarian society); the Rwandan genocide (which was largely carried out using machetes and was clearly ethnic and political in nature).

Next, there is the claim that "technology makes you less human." I find this rather odd, especially since to my perspective, some of the most egregious acts that we could characterize as "dehumanizing" are the institutionalization of slavery by low-tech societies such as ancient Rome and the antebellum United States.

Further, this claim not only bluntly ignores the numerous benefits of scientific inquiry, it ignores the patently obvious fact that paper books are just another technological device. This is a common oversight by people who react negatively to a disruptive technology; e.g. someone who decries the cell phone as a "dehumanizing influence" would be decidedly upset if you removed their land line. There is also no Golden Age of human authenticity free of technology; it's a fiction, and a detrimental one at that. Humans have depended upon tools since the moment we arose from the Darwinian muck with a club in one hand and a stone knife in the other. I.e. a book is every bit as much a tool as a Kindle, books just don't need batteries.

I might add that you probably would not enjoy life in the types of nations where technology is heavily restricted, e.g. Burma, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. The only way to ensure that technology is controlled in a society is, well, to heavily control that society via totalitarian measures. (Haranguing the public rarely works; it hasn't stopped people from buying Japanese cars, cheap socks made in China, hiring illegal immigrants, and so forth.)

By the way, I recommend you refrain from mistakenly presuming that my position is that technology is exclusively or inherently positive. Rather, you need to apply moral standards and judgment to the person, not the thing.


So now that we have dispensed with the idea that technology is "guilty by association with Nazism" or that "technology is inherently evil," what about specific objections to ebooks?

From what I can see:

a. Ebooks will concentrate information into a small number of organizations, allowing for manipulation and control.
b. Your reading habits are now highly trackable.
c. Proponents of ebooks "hate books."
d. ebooks represent a "cultural destruction."

Corporate consolidation is an ongoing process, but that's the case anyway regardless of any technological changes. However, the low cost of distribution of digital content opens up the possibilities for multiple repositories of information, and an open and democratic means for content creators to present their wares. For example, the vast majority of books that I have on my Kindle are public domain books that were digitized by Project Gutenberg. PG is a non-profit and volunteer-driven organization and an early leader in ebooks, which currently provides free, legal, open and unlimited access to over 30,000 titles. Ever school, library and private citizen can copy and distribute an electronic version of the collected works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron, and basically any other book published prior to 1923 for free. To anyone. At any time. Without restrictions. Without tracking. Without DRM. 100% legally. Without Amazon or anyone else having the ability (legally or technically) to permanently remove it from my device. So, I for one have a hard time seeing how this results in "more control" or is in any way, shape or form a negative outcome.

Or, to illustrate it another way: There's a pretty good chance that 20 years from now, every English-language text-based book ever written and every piece of music eve recorded will fit on a single hard drive the size of a trade paperback. Once that happens, it's going to be extremely difficult for any single agency to genuinely suppress content. (In fact, the difficulty of controlling content gives rise to digital piracy, which some anti-ebook individuals view as a major issue.)

Even before the advent of ebooks and other forms of modern technology, it wasn't that difficult for a powerful central ruler to manipulate, suppress and destroy content. E.g. Catholic suppression of what we now call "gnostic" texts almost completely eliminated hundreds of early Christian gospels; we only found one copy (the Nag Hammadi texts) by sheer luck. And Qin Shi Huang successfully ordered the destruction of countless scholarly works (and scholars) in medieval China.

As to tracking and oversight of content, I fully concur that this is something to be aware of. There may even be numerous benefits to adopting stricter controls on how corporations and governments can use various forms of information (cf. EU legislation relating to privacy rights). However, it's worth noting that now, pretty much any item you purchase with a credit card, or any book you read with a library card, is eminently trackable in the event that you run afoul of the authorities. If "being tracked" is your concern, then I suggest you chop up your credit cards, buy all your books in cash while wearing a disguise, destroy your books as soon as you're done reading them, and never mention them to anyone. Oh, and don't write any emails, don't surf the Internet, don't write paper letters, don't save paper letters, don't own a computer, etc etc....

And as to the idea that "proponents of ebooks hate books," this is patently false. Many of us prefer ebooks because we are the heavy readers, who gain the most benefits from the transition to digital. No one is suggesting that paper books should be banned, made illegal, used in campfires or even stigmatized. Many MR posters even lament the social changes that are already underway. So spare us your straw men.

Last but not least, is your claim that the digital transition is "a cultural crime and prefigures a totalitarian condition that could lead to genocide."

The reason why we do not accept this premise is because it is laughably histrionic and demonstrably false.

1) Totalitarianism does not require modern technology. Oppressive political control has been a constant in human societies.
1a) Methods of societal control (i.e. ones not specifically political in nature) do not require modern technology (though it often does try to exploit new inventions). Again, read some Foucault and maybe some Chomsky.
2) Genocide and mass murder does not require modern technology. (Per my earlier post, read up on the history of genocide.)
3) Many of us are familiar with disruptive technologies by now, and know that we can critique them intelligently without going completely overboard and insisting that they will lead directly to another Holocaust.
4) Many of us are aware that in many ways, the advancements of technology can lead to a decentralization of social and even political power.
5) "Books" are not going away; they are just changing form, and as such will be more widely accessible, more convenient, and more affordable.
6) To put it in far more charitable terms than you have earned to date: You have a lot to learn about how to persuade people to your point of view.

Oh, as to the irony: You're using a method you decry as patently evil and leading to totalitarians and genocide to.... stop people from using the communication method you just used. It's like a man using a megaphone to declare that megaphones are evil and should be abandoned. I mean, really, do you expect anyone to read your blog entry on a Kindle, and then just throw it in the trash?

Expedience does not resolve the contradiction. And hyperbolic broadsides against technology do not provide specific, practical, rational, workable ways to ameliorate any specific problems that arise due to the transition to digital content.

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

The point is: create discourse, not spew. But all you do is react, insult, thoughtlessly, with utterly asinine tripe.

It is also exactly what you are doing.

Read your own posts. You swan in and declare that we are all basically genocidal mass-murdering totalitarian Nazis because we like ebooks. Is that your idea of "thoughtful discourse?"

Your own posts here are rife with insults, disrespect, sweeping mischaracterizations, insulting presumptions, inflammatory rhetoric, and largely devoid of rational argument or critiques. You get what you give.

[kindlekitten]

In all seriousness...

As a young soldier, I was stationed in Nuernburg. I decided to avail myself of the college courses available to us. One of the courses I took was "The Nuerenburg Trials". I figured that it was an incredible oppourtunity to be right there where they happened. Indeed, we were taken to the actual courthouse and courtroom. As many as could fit were seated in the Defendant's box to watch the footage from the trial (and boy was that an eerie feeling to realize whose seat you were in!). We had survivors, minor members of government and Joe citizen come and speak to us. Regret and overwhelming sadness was one of the chief impressions I immediately got. Along with these emotions were the need to carry on with life. Certainly the Simon Wiesenthals of the world were and are necessary, but these survivors did not dwell in the past, and they did not expect others to dwell in the past for them. They did expect that the most important tool available be wielded on their behalf. That tool is knowledge. As we are no longer a society that receives an oral history (for the most part), out knowledge is transmitted by the written word. We are now living in a society where instances, brief flashes of life "go viral". That is done through this technology that you are currently using to berate us with. It is absolutely impossible for a government to launch such and campaign of terror. Watching that student in Tiannamen Square face down a tank was the beginning of this affect on government. Can you imagine what would have happened if that had been put on the internet (if it had existed)? The Wall may not have been the only thing that fell during those years.

These ebooks that you decry make it possible for people to have and own that knowledge. I knew many soldiers my own age that had never heard of Anne Frank, were only fuzzy on many of the issues of WWII. Young Germans at that time were prevented from knowing virtually anything. I was stationed there when the US mini-series "The Holocaust" was broadcast. According to my German friends, hotlines were set up for many of the younger population who had not been taught this part of their history while their country tried to heal from within. Fear drives those actions. Fear of change, fear of embracing new technology.

Have fun with your internet blogging and welcome to the new millennium.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

But I don't understand how you can have read what you've read in my Huffington Post piece about the history of Nazi Genicide and destruction of the PHYSICAL book, and still not understand why your ownership and advocacy of a machine created to displace the book as a cultural artifact is a kind of cultural crime and prefigures a totalitarian condition that could lead to genocide.

1) "Replace" is not the same as "destroy." Nobody's advocating the removal of books--they're advocating an *additional* method of information exchange, one that's not subject to burning, one that's widespread and cheap and long-lasting.

2) Many of us believe that what's important about books is the content, not the carrier. That while a leatherbound silk-paper book is a glorious device, and aesthetically pleasing, a dog-eared paperback is much less so, and replacing it with a collection of ones and zeros is no great loss to the world.

What do you think should be done about the incredible amount of waste created by the publishing industries? All those popular novels that are read once and thrown into garbage bins... should it be mandatory to recirculate them somehow?

3) We are predicting, not advocating, drastic changes and the probable destruction of the printing industries. This is the same destruction-of-industry that happened when the automobile made horse-drawn carriages obsolete. They still exist, but they're no longer a common method of transportation; we expect--without insisting--that paper books will eventually reach the same state. (Note that the existence of recorded music has not destroyed live music industries. We expect the same for books: the addition of a high-tech version of the content will not eliminate demand for the low-tech version, just change it.)

4) Books are not people. Repeat: BOOKS ARE NOT PEOPLE. Destruction of books (which is not being advocated) is not the same as murder. This hyperbole is why a lot of people have stopped listening to you. Human culture may change as a result of ebooks, but this will not cause the slaughter of millions. If you believe otherwise, you'll need to support that claim.

Why is it so impossible for you to grasp that what you are engaging in, doing, is destroying the world of books, one of the principal pillars upon which decent society has rested,

One of the principal pillars of WHITE EUROPEAN society. Books have not been a tool of enlightenment and wisdom in all the world's cultures; in a lot of them, books are a tool of oppression and domination. Your unwillingness to acknowledge how online communication has brought a voice to many formerly-silenced people is another reason people aren't taking you seriously.

And we are not "destroying" books. EBOOKS ARE BOOKS. We are destroying, perhaps, the social egregores on which the publishing industries rely. Books--the collections of copyrightable material--exist outside of the media that carry them.

and you are replacing what you destroy with a kind of nihilistic apathetic cult of convenience.

Since starting to read ebooks, I've learned to use PML, Dropbook, Calibre, aspects of Styles in Word, ConvertLit, RB Library, eCub, and am pondering tackling installation of Python and use of scripts. There's an awful lot of computer skills tied up in my "cult of convenience."

Further, you are willing to trade away your privacy and individual freedom by subsidizing an electronic fake book linked to networks that keep track of what you read.

You have some odd delusions about the ebook world. I have a Sony PRS-505. Nobody tracks what I read. Not even my computer; most of my books are loaded drag-and-drop onto the Reader, from three different computers; there's no record of what I've read and what I haven't, and what I've edited on the Reader.

You've mistaken the Kindle for "all ebook readers" (and you've got some mistaken ideas about that), and that's part of why MR members don't take you seriously--you don't know what you're talking about.

Why is it so hard to grasp that wharever benefit you believe accrues for you from these machines

Like carrying 400 books in my purse, and loading a handful of 20k-50k-word fanfics onto the reader in the morning so I've got new reading material during lunch, and the ability to keep my place in a dozen reference books at once. The ability to keep obscure, funny scripts with me at all times, to show off to new friends if they're interested. (I have the Happy Fun Ball text on my Reader.) The ability to keep maps and bus schedules indefinitely, not have them get wrinkled and torn in my purse.

is rubbish compared to the cultural traditions and human freedoms that you are blithely trampling on.

You'll need to describe a bit better these "cultural traditions and human freedoms," because I'm not seeing how those are being lost. The tradition that says publishers will decide what's fit for me to read? The freedom to pay not only for what I read, but for the percentage of books that get returned as unsellable?

I don't understand how you don't see that and must conclude that there is something fundamentally changed in you as the result of your immersion in the culture of these soul-destroying gadgets.

I'm so sorry you're so scared at all these changes.

If the Goddess exists in the blackness between the stars, then surely She exists in the blank pixels between screen changes. Gadgets don't destroy my soul.

And these gadgets aren't isolated, didn't spring out of nowhere... they came on the coattails of generations of computer, television, and music distribution technology. Which part of an ebook reader is soul-destroying? The part that gets content from the internet? The part that lets people with poor eyesight read books previously unavailable to them? The part that lets them carry hundreds of hours of entertainment in their pockets?

They have wounded your moral perception, your abiility to weigh and measure consequences.

This is a decent claim (not, I believe, an accurate one), but you haven't supported it. You will have to define moral perception, and describe how those who use ebooks lack it. In order to do that, you'll need a lot more awareness of how ebooks work and who uses them.

[quote]You and your fellow e-bookers and high-techers are guilty. I accuse you all of gross cultural irresponsability that has lead to the imminent downfall of the book iindustry and the desruction of book culture [quote]

We don't conflate those two. The publishing industry is not the same as book culture. If you want to claim they are, you'll need another essay.

and I regard it as little less than an economic and cultural war crime of sorts, no less than any Nazi who burned a book. For like him, you are thoughtless, ignorant of history and its consequences and clueless as to the horrors that you are inviting into our lives by destroying the sacred book.

What makes books "sacred?" The shape, or the contents? What obligation have we to maintain them as objects--do you rail against the recycling industries that turn used books and newspapers and magazines into pulp?

Do you think there's a difference between books, newspapers and magazines, other than "some are published on cheaper paper, and more often?"

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

But I don't understand how you can have read what you've read in my Huffington Post piece about the history of Nazi Genicide and destruction of the PHYSICAL book, and still not understand why your ownership and advocacy of a machine created to displace the book as a cultural artifact is a kind of cultural crime and prefigures a totalitarian condition that could lead to genocide. Why is it so impossible for you to grasp that what you are engaging in, doing, is destroying the world of books, one of the principal pillars upon which decent society has rested, and you are replacing what you destroy with a kind of nihilistic apathetic cult of convenience. Further, you are willing to trade away your privacy and individual freedom by subsidizing an electronic fake book linked to networks that keep track of what you read. Why is it so hard to grasp that wharever benefit you believe accrues for you from these machines is rubbish compared to the cultural traditions and human freedoms that you are blithely trampling on. I don't understand how you don't see that and must conclude that there is something fundamentally changed in you as the result of your immersion in the culture of these soul-destroying gadgets. They have wounded your moral perception, your abiility to weigh and measure consequences. You and your fellow e-bookers and high-techers are guilty. I accuse you all of gross cultural irresponsability that has lead to the imminent downfall of the book iindustry and the desruction of book culture and I regard it as little less than an economic and cultural war crime of sorts, no less than any Nazi who burned a book. For like him, you are thoughtless, ignorant of history and its consequences and clueless as to the horrors that you are inviting into our lives by destroying the sacred book.

Okay... One LAST TIME! It is NOT the medium used that is important. What is important is the *MESSAGE*. If the story, data/history or instructions are inscribed upon a gold plate, wall of a cave, sheet of paper or electronically displayed on a screen, that can be transmitted to the reader. I don't really care if I read it via black dots on a white (light gray) screen or black dots on a white (pale beige) sheet of paper. Either way, I'm gaining knowledge or entertainment.

Where your premise fails is you claim that the method of inputting this information is more important than what information is input. If I only read Hitlerian lies and propaganda, I'm not going to have as positive a world view no matter *HOW* I read it. So the real problem is that I (under this scenario) have self-limited (or perhaps my input is being manipulated by 'other powers', in which case I may not be aware of the limits) the data.

You should be far more concerned that people may not be getting the full picture. You are not. Instead, you scream that the medium is more important than the message and cry that we need to restrict people's freedom of choice. That, my so ill-educated and dangerously ignorant friend, is why people are reacting so negatively to your message. In essence, you are acting as a 'useful idiot' for those who would limit individual freedoms.

'Nough said?

Derek

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

After reading some of Kaufman's rants on another forum just now:

http://www.lisnews.org/provocative_e...c_book_burning

I have to amend my earlier post-- he's mentally ill.

He's not ill; he's terrified. He's *begging* us to understand the risks we're taking. He's honestly convinced our souls, and the souls of all humanity, are in grave danger. (I've seen a lot of scared proselytutes; I know the type.)

He's watching the sacred cows of his childhood, which he was told carried all great human wisdom, be set aside or torn apart and replaced with hyperactive pocketwatches, which he is now being told contain just *oodles* more wisdom and entertainment and all-around goodness than those sedate, austere, respectable leather tomes.

And he can't quite believe it, and there's just so much *drek* online that he can't accept that anything that feeds from it can rival those icons of purity of knowledge.

He's also misinformed on a number of aspects, and he doesn't want to get closer to the demons to figure out what those are.

And... heh. He's local to me. I think I'll try to find out when/where he's next doing a public appearance. Because I think he's one of those people who can't believe the people he talks to online are *real*; he doesn't quite get that these are real conversations.

[Alan Kaufman]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

In all seriousness...

As a young soldier, I was stationed in Nuernburg. I decided to avail myself of the college courses available to us. One of the courses I took was "The Nuerenburg Trials". I figured that it was an incredible oppourtunity to be right there where they happened. Indeed, we were taken to the actual courthouse and courtroom. As many as could fit were seated in the Defendant's box to watch the footage from the trial (and boy was that an eerie feeling to realize whose seat you were in!). We had survivors, minor members of government and Joe citizen come and speak to us. Regret and overwhelming sadness was one of the chief impressions I immediately got. Along with these emotions were the need to carry on with life. Certainly the Simon Wiesenthals of the world were and are necessary, but these survivors did not dwell in the past, and they did not expect others to dwell in the past for them. They did expect that the most important tool available be wielded on their behalf. That tool is knowledge. As we are no longer a society that receives an oral history (for the most part), out knowledge is transmitted by the written word. We are now living in a society where instances, brief flashes of life "go viral". That is done through this technology that you are currently using to berate us with. It is absolutely impossible for a government to launch such and campaign of terror. Watching that student in Tiannamen Square face down a tank was the beginning of this affect on government. Can you imagine what would have happened if that had been put on the internet (if it had existed)? The Wall may not have been the only thing that fell during those years.

These ebooks that you decry make it possible for people to have and own that knowledge. I knew many soldiers my own age that had never heard of Anne Frank, were only fuzzy on many of the issues of WWII. Young Germans at that time were prevented from knowing virtually anything. I was stationed there when the US mini-series "The Holocaust" was broadcast. According to my German friends, hotlines were set up for many of the younger population who had not been taught this part of their history while their country tried to heal from within. Fear drives those actions. Fear of change, fear of embracing new technology.

Have fun with your internet blogging and welcome to the new millennium.

Dear KindleKitten,

I want to thank you for offering an amazingly civilized and well-considered response. Your account of sititing in the seats of the Nuremberg courtroom is moving and I find the points you've raised compelling. In ithe 90's made a great number of visits to Germany in my capacity as author but I had very different impressions. In fact, on my first night there, I asked my host, the head of a cultural institute, whether there was a rising Neo-Nazi problem in Germany and he promptly replied:"No!". An instant later, a van screeched past pursued by two police cars wth spinning blue lights and all three veered onto an embankment, braked, the van doors flew open, out jiumped a group of skinheads who charged up the hill as the police leaped from their cars and gave chase. At the top of the hill were hundreds of skinheads rioting against hundreds of police. During my tour, especially in East Germany, I encountered numerous skinheads driving around in autos that displayed the Confederate flag and everywhere I went, in gas stations and the like, I noticed confederate flag key chains, confederate flag antennae ornaments, confederate flag patches, pens, et al. When I asked one of the officials at University of Erlangen why the prevalence of confederate flags he explained that since the Swatstika is banned in Germany, people use confederate flags as a substitute totemic expression of their true sympathies. KindleKitten, I saw a hell of a lot of confederate flags while there. Across Germany, Neo-Nazis were burning Turkish women and children alive in their own homes, including in places like Solingen, the birthplace of Adolf Eichman, one of the chief administrators and policy makers of the Final Solution. And today, in Europe, anti-Semitism has reached levels unseen since World War II. The Jews of France are in flight, emigrating to Israel and other places, because things have grown so perilous for them in their home country. Imagine the irony of that! I'm the son of a French Jewish Holocaust survivor who must watch French Jews once more driven out by anti-Semitism. Incredible!
You describe my essays and responses as harangues. True, some of my later responses have grown defensive. I think this is due, in part, to the extraordinary hostility that has erupted on this and other tech-freindly websites in response to my essays on Evergreen Review and The Huffington Post. I want to point you to, if I may, the responses on this website. I have been called every name in the book. I have been threatened with axphixiation by plastic bag. I have been the butt of every sort of vileness imaginable. Why? Because i express opinions that do not concur with the
veneration of hi-tech that is the premise of this and other like websites.
In other words: get with us or face vilification and abuse. Which is my point.
Where here on this site among these hundreds of responses is a single trace of evidence to support the view that electronic book replacements and hi-tech will usher in some new dawn of enlightenment. In fact, yours and one others is the only genuine evidence of civilizational high intelligence evident throughout this entire thread--a thread that now exceeds 300 posts. I'm afraid that my brief experience on this website confirms my worst fears, that hi-tech is fostering a new breed of uncivil and largely ignorant barbarians who may indeed have accesss to thousands of texts but in no way benefit
from them because they are unsupported by any sort of civiilizational tradition, such as books and book culture. May I point out that among the Nazis were amazingly cultured and well-read individuals, who listened to music by Bruckner and Wagner, attended ballets and theater, read books by Goethe, and went out in the evening, pulling on their white gloves, to
axphixiate and incinerate Jews 3,000 at a time (capacity of the chambers at Auchswitz--they were the size of football fields) using new technology.
It is not only what one reads but cultural respect for the medium of its transmission that produces civilization, decency, tradition. Here, I encounter a very snide, Nazi-like culture of jeering and hurtfulness and most of all, of
herd-like conformity that positively astonishes me! Not a single voice of dissent! Only a lot of backslapping and heehawing and above all, self-reighteous smugness that, too, reminds me of the National Socialists.

But then, there is you and I want you to know that because of your fine statement I will reread what you've written and consider and reconsider and reconsider again. You have given me pause for thought, if only to probe and revisit my assumptions, to see where they can be better focused or if needed, changed.

But you stand alone among these hundreds. If one in three hundred Americans are like you, that is cause for hope but not very much hope.
Many many more like you will be needed to pursuade me that we are not on a downward slide to hell.

Thank you!
With regards,
Alan

What I don't understand is why the need for the new technology in the first place? What is wrong with books? Libraries? The argument

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

What I don't understand is why the need for the new technology in the first place? What is wrong with books? Libraries?

Nothing is wrong with books--except for the time and expense of producing and distributing them, and the amount of space they take up. Not everyone lives next to a large, well-stocked library. And no library is infinite--I suspect that no libraries contain all the texts currently available at Project Gutenberg. I am certain none of them can allow a hundred readers at once to read all of those texts.

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

It is not only what one reads but cultural respect for the medium of its transmission that produces civilization, decency, tradition.

Once again, flowery statements that just aren't based on evidence or logic, and are in fact pure demagoguery. Respect for the medium has nothing to do whatsoever with decency, and it may in fact hold back civilization, not "produce" it. As for "tradition", every society has had such venerable and long-standing traditions as beating your wife or drinking yourself into a stupor to celebrate holidays. The crux of your argument just doesn't hold water, and framing it in ever more passionate terms isn't going to change that one bit.

[meraxes]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

What is wrong with books?

- There aren't any of those I want to read where I live, for a start. Anything in English (apart from a few hundred titles available locally) I have to order from a thousand miles away, at a considerable expense. And then it takes them at least 10 days to arrive.

- Books a perishable. Fires, floods, rats, etc. An electronic copy is indestructable. Even if you lose your hard drive, you can always download a new copy from the net, where it's abailable in infinite copies.

- Books are big and bulky. I can't lug a whole library of paper books when I travel. My ereader holds thousands.

Now, do you want me also to explain what is wrong with horse-drawn carriages, candles and telegraph?