4 ms·
1984 the book only tells us about a bleak future. Amazon's Kindle policies show u that future. They're just following the maxim "Show, don't tell!" Obligatory
by keyist 17y ago
1984 the book only tells us about a bleak future. Amazon's Kindle policies show u that future. They're just following the maxim "Show, don't tell!"
Obligatory link to Stallman's Right to Read essay: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Deleting the books is actually one of the more benign things they can do. What is truly scary is them or others changing the content of books Ministry of Truth style, without us realizing it.
- sailormoon 17y agoYour comment goes a little too far (this is not the full realisation of 1984, not yet anyway) but you do raise a good point. It introduces the first actual working memory hole; one of the key enablers of the 1984 regime. Imagine some little guy writes a controversial tell-all book, it's published. People buy it on Kindle. The guy is sued by The Man, loses, and any unsold books are pulped - plus, now, any Kindle books are recalled, or possibly revised. We have the technology ...
- andreyf 17y agoAnd we have the legal basis, in some parts of the world (notably, China).
- sailormoon 17y agoWell the worst thing is it seems like there doesn't even need to be a legal basis! Everything's under a "license", no-one owns anything. What's to stop a newspaper company retroactively editing the news? Their news? Hell the system is in place for that already. Most news syndication uses Atom or similar, that has support for "updates". We might be giving away more than we bargained for when we replace paper for mutable digitalia. We need to at least think about how we can address this systemic risk.