Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four:
The power to delete your books, movies, and music remotely is a power no one should have. Here’s one way around this: Don’t buy a Kindle until Amazon updates its terms of service to prohibit remote deletions. Even better, the company ought to remove the technical capability to do so, making such a mass evisceration impossible in the event that a government compels it. (Sony and Interead–makers of rival e-book readers–didn’t immediately respond to my inquiries about whether their devices allow the same functions. As far as I can tell, their terms of service don’t give the companies the same blanket right to modify their services at will, though.)
Robert Heinlein’s Friday wasn’t one of his better works, but, I still remember the argument that one of the protagonists made in favor of a library of paper books: roughly, they’re off the grid and robust enough to survive a collapse of technological civilization. I have nothing against e-books, and plan to invest in an e-book reader when the technology gets its kinks worked out. But various information technologies do have trade offs. I recall that a shift in the type of paper used for books means that works published today are going to disintegrate much faster that those published hundreds of years in the past. But, it also means that books are very cheap and widely available. The column above takes a glass half-empty worst-case scenario attitude, but it’s worth examining.
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