Comments on: Rethinking the Kindle

By: Todd

Todd — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:17:40 +0000

1. I agree with morganovich.
2. There is no such thing as copyright.

By: John and Dagny Galt

John and Dagny Galt — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:14:35 +0000

We swear we will never purchase or use a Kindle.

By: epobirs

epobirs — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:42:51 +0000

Sounds like Bradbury. He always struck as a huge snob. Look up some of his writing disparaging the ownership of personal vehicles. He has this bizarre utopian memory of Los Angeles in the 40s that nobody else can seem to recall, where everybody happily got about on foot. He seems to think LA, of all places, was no bigger than old London and all the rest of county not worth considering.

By: Gil

Gil — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:20:48 +0000

Maybe easy book burning is why it’s called a “Kindle.”

By: morganovich

morganovich — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:19:17 +0000

is it possible that this is, in fact, a brilliant and subversive marketing campaign by the owners of the Orwell copyrights?

if anything is going to make people WANT to buy the more expensive physical copies of 1984 etc and ferret them away, this is it…

you can’t buy that kind of publicity. sucks for amazon, but maybe they make it up on hard copies?

By: aub

aub — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:06:47 +0000

I think what creeps most people out about this Kindle episode is that users now realize how easily an electronic book, magazine, or newspaper can be deleted or modified without owner approval or notification.

As for Fahrenheit 451, I enjoy re-reading it every now and again. The alienation that comes from everyone wearing earbuds and interacting with their wall TVs rather than with neighbors and family seems prescient for a book originally written in 1953. And it’s not really about government censorship; it’s about society’s rejection of intellect.

“There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum , no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!”
Captain Beatty

By: Evil Red Scandi

Evil Red Scandi — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:21:11 +0000

I don’t get what’s different about the potential for monitoring. Yes, I suppose you could go to the bookstore and pay cash if you want your collection of Ray Bradbury to be anonymous, but for most of us the trade-off in time between jerking around with brick and mortar and vs. a few seconds of point ‘n click outweighs the need for privacy of our reading habits – in any case, Amazon knows what I read anyway.

Even that’s not necessarily “evil” – I also own a retail store and we track every purchase by every customer so we can figure out which products they like. It’s pretty much Management 101 stuff.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:21:47 +0000

I don’t understand the dichotomy here between censorship and ubiquitous low-brow expectations of art. When you have a society that is compulsorily collective, they are one in the same: the collective decision to destroy an asset is carried out by what passes for government. Unless 451 is less well-crafted than I remembered and expected, this is the overall point.

In a society where individuals are creative and do not force themselves on others via democracy, yet still demanding of art any type, then book burnings as a tool to oppress individuals does not exist. Both Brave-New-World-style ignorance and taste for the inane _and_ a fascist government are required here (and obviously reinforce one another).

By: Esox Lucius

Esox Lucius — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:19:06 +0000

I rediscovered Bradbury when I was 22. I reread 451 and he had put a forward in the version I read that said the book was about censorship and specifically minorities that were unhappy with what the majority was reading. He may have toned that down recently but I specifically remember him writing that his work was abridged and put into condensed versions for people in grade schools to read as “easy readers” I remember reading them as a child and liked his work then. He mentioned in the forward that the editors always wanted to tone down 451 and it made him crazy that they wanted to censor a book about censorship. I will have to dig out that copy and take a look at it again.

By: mld

mld — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:09:38 +0000

I saw Ray Bradbury speak a few months ago at the LA Book Fair (he is a huge supporter of books and libraries) and he opened with an actor (as Montag) performing a stinging in-your-face new scene from 451 clearly aimed at people’s preference of TV, celebrities, and pop culture. To paraphrase the actor: “I don’t even need to burn the books — you are doing such a good job for me…you are only interested in a headline, no…the sound bite, that’s all *you* want.” Ray followed-up with a rant against the LA Times for cutting its book review section of the Sunday Times to 1 page a month. It was…glorious.