Kaufman links e-book trend to bookburning, Nazis

[HansTWN]

Let us look at it this way. If Kaufman, as a young boy, had found solace in horses he would be calling us Nazis for driving cars. He had a rough childhood, and that is a good reason not to be too harsh on him. He thinks some of the few things he remembers fondly are disappearing and it makes him angry and sad. But what he doesn't see, is that they are not disappearing, that they are transforming, changing for the better. With an electronic reader that child can sit anywhere and have a whole library with him or her. What can be more wonderful than that? That is life, always changing, always evolving.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by taglines

The only person who saw it was Alan, because I sent it to him.

You are telling a lie again, Dan Bloom's sockpuppet. Here's the relevant part of a post of yours from earlier in this very thread. Note that you published it for everyone, not just e-mailing it to Kaufman. Kaufman may be wrong, but at least he is (apparently) honest.:

Originally Posted by 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

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

John Locke wrote: "New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."

Damn, there goes another irony meter.

Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

You are, obviously, at the "fighting us" stage.

[emonti8384]

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.

Ah, the beauty of free will

Ebooks were not meant to replace paperback books. If you are so opposed to the idea of Kindles and ebooks then tell your publisher to pull your books from Amazon in the Kindle Edition.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_...refix=alan+kau

Hmmm... looks like your not as opposed to the ebook as you once thought, eh?

[wayrad]

One of those ebooks is edited by the Alan Kaufman in question, the other two aren't.

[Hellmark]

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."

It is highly possible to find relative comparison in events such as the holocaust, however not everything could be effectively compared. Most of the time, when people compare everyday events to major events (or profane to sacred, if you will), they do so with the intent (although may not be conscious of such) to merely evoke emotion.

Yesterday, someone told me that another person near by was acting like a Nazi. The person merely was yelling at others for wearing hats, or speaking too loud for their tastes. Was that a valid comparison? Not really. It was an extreme view. Personally I think that when people make such comparisons, they really lessen the larger event. Your insistence on comparing an every day, nonlife threatening item to an event where millions died, really kind of cheapens the more serious situation. I feel bad about the plight of your mother, and I am glad she survived, but at the same time I am aghast that you appear to be making it out to be less than what it was. Also, I fully acknowledge what your mother went through, never denying it, at the same time as I find your claims that ebooks are like the holocaust to be a little far fetched.

[PhishStyx]

I've come to the conclusion that he was merely here as a means of raising his search ranking on Google, and that this thread should be deleted so as to not give him any more assistance.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by PhishStyx

I've come to the conclusion that he was merely here as a means of raising his search ranking on Google, and that this thread should be deleted so as to not give him any more assistance.

Works for may. Anyone as "greedy" for attention as to equate Nazism with Ebook proliferation is worth ignoring in my book.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by PhishStyx

I've come to the conclusion that he was merely here as a means of raising his search ranking on Google, and that this thread should be deleted so as to not give him any more assistance.

I don't want a long, complex thread deleted.

And I don't care if it increases his Google ratings, if it also gives people a chance to see what's said in reaction to him. Using a site that rebuts everything you say to increase your ratings is not a good way to increase your web-popularity. It may get you more numbers, temporarily, but it doesn't get you long-term support.

Kaufman's a fanatic. He *believes* in what he's saying. It's got to disturb him that people might Google for him, and become convinced he's wrong based on what's being said here.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I don't want a long, complex thread deleted.

And I don't care if it increases his Google ratings, if it also gives people a chance to see what's said in reaction to him. Using a site that rebuts everything you say to increase your ratings is not a good way to increase your web-popularity. It may get you more numbers, temporarily, but it doesn't get you long-term support.

Kaufman's a fanatic. He *believes* in what he's saying. It's got to disturb him that people might Google for him, and become convinced he's wrong based on what's being said here.

What is and has been disturbing since his first post is how he presumes to quash the freedom of individual readers from choosing to read in ebook format; instead insisting that we should all be forced to read strictly pbooks. And he doesn't have a single clue as to how totalitarian such would be. He complains about us being proto-Nazis for choosing a book medium we find most usable, yet fails - completely - to understand how Nazi-like it is for him to encourage depriving us of our choice of medium. Quite ironic considering he's jewish and his own mother escaped from Nazi Germany.

Derek

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

he presumes to quash the freedom of individual readers from choosing to read in ebook format; instead insisting that we should all be forced to read strictly pbooks.

But it's not totalitarianism when it's about SACRED BOOKS! Which are, of course, sacred regardless of your cultural heritage, because any cultures that don't revere the printed word are doing it wrong. (We will not discuss what "it" is. We're talking books here; don't confuse the issue with your Hi-Tech factoids.)

Because *everyone* benefits from reading on printed pages! Battery-powered text is inherently soul-sucking and meaningless. Children especially, but also adults, don't need a "choice" to read from screens that hold variable content; such devices are inherently incapable of giving a *real* book experience, which is the foundation of our society!

(We all have one society! Anyone who says otherwise is trying to make us all fit in the machine!)

[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

[catsittingstill]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

My pardon for not responding to your earlier postings.

Actually standard practice would be to beg *taglines*'s pardon for not responding, rather than offering tagline your pardon, which is not called for, as far as I can tell.

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 (sic) to the Holocaust. Period. Whatever connection, link, I can find between the Holocaust and our contemporary condition, I shall express.

Shorter, clearer version of the above. "I'll call you Nazis anytime I feel like it and you should suck it up and agree with me because Nazis persecuted my family."

I am, of course, very sorry that Nazis persecuted anyone. I do not agree that your family history gives you the right to get away with calling people Nazis for liking e-books. Nor do I agree that liking e-books makes us Nazi-like or even reprehensible in some more minor way.

It is, frankly, astonishing to me that you would *begin* the conversation by calling us Nazis and then complain because *we* are impolite to *you*.

Yet I did not see anyone raise miuch (sic) or any objection to Tarrintino's (sic) use of the Holocaust.

If it makes you feel any better I didn't complain because I wasn't aware it existed: I hate Quentin Tarantino's work with a passion and avoid it as assiduously as in the future I shall avoid yours. For different reasons, of course--his work, while stomach-turningly violent, is at least comprehensible.

But it is not only my history. It is yours too.

In the sense that my grandfather was thrown in concentration camp, and very nearly died, for aiding the Dutch Resistance, sure. And your point was what, again?

[catsittingstill]

Dear Mr Kauffman,

Thanks to Delphidb96, I noticed this post you had written. Apparently, however, you deleted it after it was quoted--at least, when I try to jump back to the original post, it's gone, replaced with some short sentence about paranoia being having all the facts. Perhaps you thought better of it, and wished to retract it, perhaps you thought a short quote would be more poignant as a "good-bye" (we can only hope for the best) post, but for whatever reason, you tried to destroy this post, to "burn" it if you will.

But you couldn't.

Why is that, Mr Kauffman? It is because you released the post on the Internet, an aggregate of millions of people reading, thinking, and writing responses--a place where almost nothing is ever lost.

You, the author, couldn't "burn" this work. How do you imagine a government, or a corporation, will *ever* manage it?

And this is why we tell you e-books, though they seem to you ephemeral as light, embodied in delicate patterns of electric charge as fragile as a mayfly's wing, destroyed by the passing of a magnet in a nearby pocket, are in fact nearly unkillable.

Just as your post survived your attempt at destruction because someone else picked it up and quoted it, so the books you fear for will be passed on from hard drive to hard drive, from post to post. They will be safer for being available as pure data.

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman
Dear Derek and others here on Mobile Read,
I'm afraid this must be my goodbye as I'm actually been neglecting the responses to my piece in Huff Post in order to spend time answering your replies. I must dialogue with them now.

I must say that this has been a very interesting experience for me and to a great degree, a failiure.(sic)

I would have to agree. Coming charging in calling us Nazis set you up for failure, and then not having any evidence for your bizarre assertions pretty much tied it up with a bow. I *am* saddened, though, that we were completely unable to bring you to contemplate the possibility that you might be mistaken about e-books--or even about the advisability of beginning a discussion by calling your audience Nazis.

I've gained a broad impression that many of you feel strongly that hi-tech plays, in some fashion, a key role in your life.

If you mean the part about not spending my life grubbing for roots in the dirt and being abused by people with bigger muscles and having ten babies that die before age five, yeah, that plays a key role in my life. Thank goodness.

Such a place was the Library in the Bronx where I grew up, a place where people were shot (my friends Spider and Chief) or stabbed (my couson Harvey)

It would truly have been terrible to have your friends shot in the library, but maybe that's not what actually happened?

At home, where I was beaten, and screamed at and mocked around the clock,

Um. How awful. Home is a place where you should be safe. Your mother should be someone who comforts and helps you.

You do understand, however, that the way you were treated at home as a kid has nothing to do with technology, right?

John Locke wrote: "New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."

Yeah, that's precisely what you are doing to us. Oh, wait, you meant something else?

Thanks Delphidb96, for quoting this post, so I could see it.

[taglines]

Somene calling himself "Anonymous" posted a comment to me about my slight editing and rewriting of Alan's original piece, purely as a thought exercise, and he said he liked it, nothing:


"I must say, [Alan's original] piece is immeasurably improved by what you have done [by taking out the Nazi/Holocaust/Jews stuff]. It is at least possible [now] to figure out what Kaufman was driving at ...once one is not seeing red from constantly being accused of being a Nazi.

Minus the insulting "you-are-all-Nazis" verbiage, there are actually some reasonably good points here. Nothing that hasn't been discussed many times at Mobileread, of course, but Kaufman is very new to all this and it obviously didn't occur to him that there might have been previous discussion in the field...."