Kaufman links e-book trend to bookburning, Nazis

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

KAUFMAN'S LAW: "Efforts such as Godwin's Law to thwart the finding of contemporary relevence in the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust denial."

Methinks the typer of the above is a tad confused about Godwin's Law of internet interaction. It is most certainly not an effort "to thwart the finding of contemporary relevence in the Holocaust." Rather, it is a quite keen observation of the typical dynamics of online discussion.

Put very simply: when a participant in an online discussion calls one or more other participants in said discussion "a Nazi" (or likens them to Nazis, or invokes Hitler, or the like), there is no longer any meaningful possibility of useful dialog. The conversation is, in effect, over. The flamage, hurt feelings, and wasted time and effort (on the other hand) are only just beginning.

This effect has been well documented in careful study (search for papers by Sara Kiesler, and you'll find several that are relevant), as well as through the long experience of many old hands on the 'net. People write things in emails, on newsgroups, and in discussion fora that they would rarely -- if ever -- say in a face-to-face conversation. Or over the telephone, or in a letter, for that matter.

Given that Mr. Kaufman opened his discourse by invoking the holocaust in an extremely strained analogy, he should not be surprised that he ticked off a major portion of his potential audience. Including nearly everyone here. Given that he continues to press the point, while not responding to any substantive criticism, he's currently heading down the path of providing yet another example of the truth of the observation.

As an aside, here's a quick hint for Mr. Kaufman: Should you choose to actually engage in a respectful discussion, there are plenty of folks here who would be happy to engage with you. You can even try to explain to us why eBooks are like the Holocaust -- if you can do it in a respectful way that avoids insulting the people you're speaking with. It would also help if you were to engage with some of the serious responses in this thread. If, on the other hand, you continue to spew over-wrought un-educated and ignorant verbiage, you're more likely to be mocked or just ignored.

Now, moving on to my main point:

I like to read. I read a lot -- both quantity and variety. My electronic library includes classics ranging from ancient Greece and Rome (Xenophon's Anabasis, for example) to Austen (and newer). It includes great literature, both old and new. It also includes Science Fiction, Fantasy, Hard-boiled detective novels, and economics texts. And political science, computer science, and scholarly histories. Romances, as in the "romance" aisle in bookstores and Romances such as The Legend of El Cid (in both Spanish and English) or Orlando Furioso (only in English -- my Italian isn't good enough). It's a bit thin in philosophy, as that's not really my thing. Just about the only thing you won't find is post-modern lit-crit and that ilk -- with the exception of the classic essay "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything" by Chip Morningstar (highly recommended, by the way).

Every electronic book in my library is entirely legal -- not a single 'pirated' or sketchily downloaded byte. It's also all under my control. No-one but me can delete the books or change even a single word. Not Apple, not Amazon, not "the gummint," not even Alan Kaufman.

So here's a challenge for Mr. Kaufman. How does your description of the supposed eBook reader match up with me? I don't own an iPod; I only got a cell-phone last year. I've been on the Internet since it was the Arpanet and it had only 3 nodes, but I don't have a twitter account and can't imagine wanting to text feverishly while I walk.
How am I emulating the Holocaust? How am I "destroying the world of books?"

I'd like an answer. Really. A calm and respectful discussion could be quite interesting. I might learn something. Mr. Kaufman might learn something. Who knows? On the other hand, a rant in response will be taken as clear evidence that "Godwin's Law" still holds (in general, as with all such), and that Mr. Kaufman is more interested in flaming than in serious discussion.

Respectfully, but not very hopefully, yours

Xenophon

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

KAUFMAN'S LAW: "Efforts such as Godwin's Law to thwart the finding of contemporary relevence in the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust denial."

Oh geez! You CANNOT redefine Kaufman's Law to fit your preconceptions! It's named *after* you, NOT as an indication of your ownership!

Derek

[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? 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? 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? 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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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 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.

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?

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


http://evergreenreview.com/120/elect...k-burning.html

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

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.

Death of PUBLISHING. Not of BOOKS.
Books are not the paper they're printed on... if they were, copyright law would be nearly meaningless; we'd have no rules against derivatives, unauthorized audio or digital versions.

Death of privacy? Only for those who accept it. Technology is not synonymous with lack of privacy, and those who fight against the corporate invasion into our private lives are--surprise!--those who understand and use technology, not those who fear it.

Monitoring? Nobody monitors what I read. I draw my sources from several different computers, several different sites on those computers; there's no central repository what I have read, what I will read, nor access to my archives (plural) of stored material.

However, my pbooks are mostly in a single storage locker, where anyone with a single search warrant could get a complete reckoning of them, and a single match could destroy them all.

So many have sought to explain away the Orwell incident with Kindle.

My explanation: Amazon broke the law, and rather than 'fess up and pay for it, they punished their customers. The fact that they can do this, is part of why I don't have a Kindle.

You've failed to explain how your anti-ebook rant applies to non-wifi ebook readers.

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.

And before that, a cluster of Ayn Rand's books, and the Harry Potter books. 1984 wasn't the first book Amazon had remote-deleted from Kindle; it was just the one that got attention. (Also, it was perhaps the first one that *Amazon* was completely at fault for: they created a feed from one of their affiliate sites, and ignored their own geographic restrictions.)

The number of bookstores that have closed. 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.

Yes. We get that. Why is that *bad*? Why does it matter whether people get their informative & entertaining content from a screen or from paper? Both are technological devices that require great industry to support them.

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?

Publishing, and publishing culture. Paper fetishists.
Books are doing fine, and spreading to people who never previously had access to them.

[catsittingstill]

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.

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.

.... wonder: what's this nut talking about?

No. No, we don't wonder what you're talking about anymore. You think e-books are bad. We've got that.

....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.

No, sweetie. Nobody missed the irony. Thanks anyway for pointing it out, though. We're very proud of you.

Why are so many human beings spending all their time on these machines?

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.

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?

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.

[HansTWN]

Dear Mr Kaufmann,

it is obvious to all of us now, that you are afraid of technology in your daily life. What you don't see is how different the world is now from what it used to be. Doesn't the Amazon "1984" incident show that people are speaking up and their voices are being heard? And why is people being hunched over screens reading books so different from being hunched over books or newspapers, as they did before they had these devices?

Yes, governments and corporations gained some control over people with new technologies. But the Nazis, the KGB and others had plenty of control and information about everybody before any of this was available. And what you do not realize is that at the same time people get control over governments and corporations. It is not possible for the few to monopolize news anymore. Everyone can get his message out and nobody is able to stop it. How can totalitarianism thrive in such a world as we have now? When so much power has been given to everybody?

You talk about privacy concerns with ebooks. A valid concern. But unless you buy all your books at various bookstores where you are not known and never use a credit card you are in the same situation. Nobody can take my books from me, ebooks or pbooks.

Your history has condemned you to see ghosts everywhere. It is good to be aware, but why be blind to the positive. Amazon did not remove "1984" because it is a political satire. It removed the book because they made a mistake and sold a version they had no right to sell. This removal was not a political statement, not a first step to oppress us. And you forget that it is exactly technology which also enabled users to just copy this book to another location and prevent it from being deleted. Back before technology, the Nazis could come to anyone's house and take their books. Now, thanks to technology you can keep it safe.

[Alan Kaufman]

>>>>>>Your history has condemned you to see ghosts everywhere.

I relish this statement of yours and choose to respond only to it because at its essence is precisely one of the problems with our culture. Per this, the Holocaust is my history but not your history. The suffering of others does not pertain to you.

But my history is going to become your history.

And when it does, you'll remember that a couple of nutty writers, like that Jewish guy Alan Kaufman and that Native American Sherman Alexie, tried to warn you.

Because our histories are your histories: you just don't know it yet. And that is the lesson, I guess, that you will have to learn, unfortunately, in a manner that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

Bon chance!

[taglines]

Alan Kaufman, sir, would you please shut up! (kidding!)

But seriously, Alan, who never replies to my emails over the past month, not once did you reply, and I say this because I am the person responsible for this thread about you being here on this forum, because I brought your Evergreen commentary essay to the attention of Steve Jordan on another forum site and he then came here and posted the news here and voila, 24 pages of attacks on you, and I will tell you why:

You have every right to write whatever you wish about books and the Internet and ereaders, and like Voltaire said, I will also defend until death your right to speak your mind, here or anywhere, but Alan Kaufman, sir, using that Nazi/Holocaust/Jews imagery in your essay completely demolished any point you were trying to make.

I first heard about your essay in the pages of Newsweek magazine, where one of their web editors blogged on it, and I believe he was the first to pick up on your Nazi/Holocaust imagery, and he also poked a bit of negativity toward you for using such absolutely pushing-the-envelope imagery in a piece about books vs ereaders.

You have some good points to make, and you made them in a few places. But by bringing up the Holocaust in Nazi Germany (due to your connection to you, and I believe everyone understands your psychological pain frok being the son of survivors, really) but by bringing up this meshagus in a completely un-related way you completely destroyed and demolished any good points you were trying to make.

I have two suggestions for you, Alan. You are undoubtly a nice guy and the video on your speaking in SF recently shows you to be a soft-spoken gentleman with short hair and a bit older than your "youthful' photos on your website from long ago, so I am sure everyone here would like you in person, and does like you as a human being. Here are my sugggestions, IMHO, if you want to communicate with Americans and Europeans about these issues:

1. drop the Nazi/Holocaust/Jews imagery in your essay....rewrite it taking out all the Nazi Holocaust imagery and just give us your POV about paper versus screens, be as angry as you want, be as cutting as you want, but drop the Nazi Holocaust imagery. THAT is what ruined your commentary completely and made everyone who read it feel you were operating in a very strange and unintelligible way. Rewrite your essay and take out the Nazi Jews stuff. Do yourself a favor. Drop that crap. You are way off base, and not one person anywhere on Earth will defend your point of view using such imagery and words. Rewrite the piece, edit it, drop all references to the Holocaust and your own Jewish background. Not germane here, Alan.

2. Reply to my emails, sir. If you are a man of your word, you will.

3. (and lighten up, Alan. this is NOT about the Holocaust. It is about some very important issues, and some of them you addressed well, but you completely screwed up and if you cannot see that now, then you will never see that. I say this as friend who actually understood what you were trying to say, but completely disagrees with the way and the tone in which you said it...)

4. Communicate. Don't rant.

[ardeegee]

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.

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?

This means that people are ever-increasingly able to communicate with the people that they want to communicate with, no matter where they are located on the planet, rather than be restricted to the people that are around you as an accident of location. It means that people are able to keep up with the news of any area of the world or any field of interest that they wish-- no matter how obscure-- as long as there are a few other people somewhere in the world that share the interest and have internet access. It means that the world is both far smaller and larger than it ever has been before. It means greater freedom of association and access to information than anyone could have ever imagined a mere hundred years ago. It means millions of people able to live in a seemingly infinite world of information while you, Mr. Kaufman, cower in a closet with your eyes closed and your hands over your ears trying to block out the world around you.

I pity you, Mr. Kaufman-- you are deaf, blind, and dumb and don't even know it.

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

If we don't manage to wipe ourselves out with war, where we stand is on the precipice of a golden age of universally available knowledge the like of which history has never before seen. We stand on the shore of a vast sea of human culture, and art and science and will take little notice of the nipping claws of crabs like you scuttling around in the sand at our feet.

[Alan Kaufman]

Tagline, see next posting for my response to you...

[Alan Kaufman]

My pardon for not responding to your earlier postings. There are now over 350 and frankly, I've lost track. I can't even offer a very original response here but must repeat what I wrote to someone earlier who objects to my use of the Holocaust.

I refuse to accept any attempt to prevent my finding contemporary relevence to the Holocaust. Period. Whatever connection, link, I can find between the Holocaust and our contemporary condition, I shall express.
I do so because all efforts to canonize it, create of if an icon, a subject for museums, lectures and films, is an effort to reject its implications, which are unbearable to many, who refuse to consider those implications. You see, when you really sit down to consider the Holocaiust and studiy it, as I have,
you begin to understand the extent of repression that exists all around us in relation to it. All that we deem modern, or even post-modern, is in fact a denial of, and refutation of the Holocaust. The full implications of the Holocaust have never really been considered. Never.

Instead, we have reduced the entire matter to a few numbing aphorisms and cliches that get repeated in one bad film after another. In fact, we have dishonored the Holocaust to such a degree that many sit laughing in theaters at films like Tarrantinos Inglorious Bastards while feeling outraged indignation at my comparison of the hi-tech war against the book to the actions of National Socialism.

Well, my mother was one of those Jews hiding under farm house floors from the German and French fascists. Had she lived to see Tarrantino's film, I feel sure she would have wept to see her experience turned into a self-referentiala statement about a narciissistic film auteur. Yet I did not see anyone raise miuch or any objection to Tarrintino's use of the Holocaust.

Lastly, implicit in your comments is a sense that the Holocaust is something sacrosanct and so removed from the realm of our experience. But that is only because you feel that it is not your history. Most people feel that way.

But it is not only my history. It is yours too.
And my history is going to become your history.

And when it does, you'll remember that a couple of nutty writers, like that Jewish guy Alan Kaufman and that Native American Sherman Alexie, tried to warn you.

Because our histories are your histories: you just don't know it yet. And that is the lesson, I guess, that you will have to learn, unfortunately, in a manner that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

Originally Posted by taglines

Alan Kaufman, sir, would you please shut up! (kidding!)

But seriously, Alan, who never replies to my emails over the past month, not once did you reply, and I say this because I am the person responsible for this thread about you being here on this forum, because I brought your Evergreen commentary essay to the attention of Steve Jordan on another forum site and he then came here and posted the news here and voila, 24 pages of attacks on you, and I will tell you why:

You have every right to write whatever you wish about books and the Internet and ereaders, and like Voltaire said, I will also defend until death your right to speak your mind, here or anywhere, but Alan Kaufman, sir, using that Nazi/Holocaust/Jews imagery in your essay completely demolished any point you were trying to make.

I first heard about your essay in the pages of Newsweek magazine, where one of their web editors blogged on it, and I believe he was the first to pick up on your Nazi/Holocaust imagery, and he also poked a bit of negativity toward you for using such absolutely pushing-the-envelope imagery in a piece about books vs ereaders.

You have some good points to make, and you made them in a few places. But by bringing up the Holocaust in Nazi Germany (due to your connection to you, and I believe everyone understands your psychological pain frok being the son of survivors, really) but by bringing up this meshagus in a completely un-related way you completely destroyed and demolished any good points you were trying to make.

I have two suggestions for you, Alan. You are undoubtly a nice guy and the video on your speaking in SF recently shows you to be a soft-spoken gentleman with short hair and a bit older than your "youthful' photos on your website from long ago, so I am sure everyone here would like you in person, and does like you as a human being. Here are my sugggestions, IMHO, if you want to communicate with Americans and Europeans about these issues:

1. drop the Nazi/Holocaust/Jews imagery in your essay....rewrite it taking out all the Nazi Holocaust imagery and just give us your POV about paper versus screens, be as angry as you want, be as cutting as you want, but drop the Nazi Holocaust imagery. THAT is what ruined your commentary completely and made everyone who read it feel you were operating in a very strange and unintelligible way. Rewrite your essay and take out the Nazi Jews stuff. Do yourself a favor. Drop that crap. You are way off base, and not one person anywhere on Earth will defend your point of view using such imagery and words. Rewrite the piece, edit it, drop all references to the Holocaust and your own Jewish background. Not germane here, Alan.

2. Reply to my emails, sir. If you are a man of your word, you will.

3. (and lighten up, Alan. this is NOT about the Holocaust. It is about some very important issues, and some of them you addressed well, but you completely screwed up and if you cannot see that now, then you will never see that. I say this as friend who actually understood what you were trying to say, but completely disagrees with the way and the tone in which you said it...)

4. Communicate. Don't rant.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

And when it does, you'll remember that a couple of nutty writers, like that Jewish guy Alan Kaufman and that Native American Sherman Alexie, tried to warn you.

And I'm equally confident that history will not remember either of you, at all.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

And I'm equally confident that history will not remember either of you, at all.

I've already forgotten who they are? Who are they again?

[PhishStyx]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

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.

Well, that just seems right damn convenient, doesn't it.

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?

I'm going to say this really big and loud because I get the impression you cannot or will not read it unless I do so.

THE RESPONSES YOU GET ARE DIRECTLY

DUE TO YOUR INSULTS OF VIRTUALLY

EVERYONE!!!!!

In other words: get with us or face vilification and abuse.

Perhaps you should stop abusing US first. You STARTED BY ABUSING US.

And that is my point. Nobody on this board has abused you in nearly the manner that you've abused all of us.

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

Nothing is wrong with books. I have rooms full of them, and I can have thousands MORE by using the technological tools available to me.


Here's a point that I don't think you've considered. If you hate technology so much that you define everyone using it as a Nazi, and YOU ARE USING technology, then by your own definition, YOU, ALAN KAUFMAN, ARE A NAZI. Does that sound right? I guess maybe it does follow logically. I do hope you aren't feeling abused?

[Moejoe]

Christ, if he thinks digital books are a Nazi, holocaust inducing tool then he better not stumble upon the darker side of this here Internet that is the 'chans'.