Saturday, July 18, 2009

WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT "KINDLE?"

UPDATE (8/13/2009): Not that online petitions ever do a damn bit of good, but here's one regarding Kindle's 1984 hijinks.

UPDATE (8/1/2009): In this week's New Yorker, Nicholson Baker takes a swipe at Kindle (No mention of the disappearing Orwell trick, however.)

In a supreme stroke of irony worthy of Orwell himself, Amazon erased the text of
1984 from its Kindle digital readers--even as said text was being read. Mark Hershon writes about the episode here. (Thanks to Randy Maugans.)

Kindle is on the face of it a useful gadget and offers certain advantages, but paper books are far more simple and elegant in that they are cheap, portable, and require no batteries. And text on dead trees doesn't vanish in mid-sentence due to any glitch, whim, copyright tussle--or government edict. The durability and immutability of the printed word far outweigh the capacity to monkey with typefaces and backlighting. Gutenberg had it right after all.

2 comments:

jeffrey said...

Howdy, guys.

I will always prefer the paper version over any sort of digital reader - too many ways for it to not work as well as the implications of the new NSAT&T sweeping wiretaps, Bushed created, Obama approved. I'm surprised the Kindle even got off the ground as a product since most Americans don't even read, but maybe they have plugins for the new digital TV format to receive two-minutes-hate! Of course there will be a subscription fee. Can't hate for free without payin' the Man!

Speaking of that stellar actor Steve Gutenberg and his great-great grandpappy's printing press, I used to visit it on weekends when I lived in Germany, back when I was "intelligently?" fighting the USSR in that banker created false Cold War. It was stationed in silence and a bit of obscurity across the river in Mainz, in a grand old cathedral that still had services, wherein it was situated somewhere near off-center in the church in the middle of an area where some of the pews had been removed. It sat uncovered and surrounded by four anemic corner posts and almost velveteen dusty rope pieces, with no security whatsoever. I actually touched it with no repercussion. Did the same vulgar childlike thing to a Picasso painting at the Hermitage in the former city of Leningrad when the not-so watchful Babushka was looking away - same lack of security. Spreading my oily digits across the world, one classic piece of art and history at a time like a classic imperialist american dolt.

Being a rabid reader and a trained graphic designer, Cold Warring for the US apparatchiks, creating propaganda for the Red, White and BS, I found it strangely comforting sitting in silence while gazing over that wonderful piece of art that revolutionized mass communication in detriment to the ruling classes and their hold over the uneducated. Being so young an uninformed to the real game plan of the Powers That Be®™, I figured I was looking at the predecessor to the graphic equipment I was using in that large US joint intelligence center in which I worked, creating intel reports for the District of Criminals and the creative propaganda that went behind the Iron Curtain to "enlighten the Soviets to what was really going on with their Politburo captors." I'll save you, you poor propagandized Soviet citizen. Boy, was I wrong.

I'm repenting now with the Rock Creek Free Press in a sloth-like, armchair Phil Agee sort of way.

Andy said...

Jeffrey,

Thanks for your beautiful comments!

Andy