4 ms·
I would like to add three other dangers of e-books. First, that a central authority could reach out and change all copies of an extant work. Not delete it, but
by javajosh 11y ago
I would like to add three other dangers of e-books.
First, that a central authority could reach out and change all copies of an extant work. Not delete it, but selectively change it. The Information Ministry never had it so good!
Second, and this is true especially for kids, I think e-books are psychologically problematic. A physical book has fewer degrees-of-freedom, and that's good because the content has nearly infinite-degrees-of-freedom. The way the device works is no mystery to kids, and once you've read it you put it on the shelf (or give it away). With e-books, you always have your whole library right there, and focus becomes an act of will instead of the default.
Third, and this is true especially for thoughtful books, you can't read an e-book with a pen. I shudder to think about reading Marcus Aurelius _Meditations_ without pen in hand!
As an added bonus, books trap carbon! So the more books we have, the better off our environment!
- jobigoud 11y agoYour first point (like the points raised by OP) is not about e-books at all, it's about a certain kind of books sold by a certain vendor.
- javajosh 11y agoConsider that a sufficiently talented programmer constructing a very powerful piece of malware could, in fact, alter every copy of something everywhere, simultaneously, no matter what it's format. And they wouldn't have to be 100% successful, they'd only need to affect enough copies to sow doubt into people minds about which is the authentic copy. My point applies to all digital media, for the simple reason that computers are remarkable in their ability to modify the state of very small things.
- cableshaft 11y agoPersonally I hate marking up physical books, so the Kindle with its highlighting feature (that saves your selections on their server and allows exporting to text file) has been a great boon for me, and I prefer Kindle for thoughtful books now.