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[pearwaldorf]

A profile of Amazon's new e-book reader and a meditation on digital publishing and its impact on culture

I can totally see this article being assigned to later cohorts taking 520, because it touches on every fucking thing we've discussed in it like Levy was eavesdropping on our classes. I will be watching this little device closely, and if it drops below $400, I might pick one up. Not because it's an e-book reader, but because it's a wireless access device with e-book reading capabilities. The only thing that concerns me, however, is the DRM. I am in agreement with Brewster Kahle that we have the technology to store all of human knowledge for future retrieval, but it's just the damn rights issues that are getting in the way.

Comments

[redgreenblue.livejournal.com]

I’m also concerned with the malleability of digital information. Sure, this opens up some interesting creative possibilities, and like the article said, it changes the dynamic between author and reader. But when power is added to the equation, things get downright scary. It’s one thing to change recently-posted blog entries and news articles; this is usually done in the interest of clarification or correcting errors.

But being able to change a book? When there isn’t a “dead tree” original for comparison, what’s to stop a particularly repressive government or organization from changing history, a la 1984? China is already doing this, to some extent, by restricting the flow of information on the internet. They’re not eager to repeat Mao’s mistakes during the Cultural Revolution, but I’m fairly certain the Chinese government would leap at the chance to “amend” literature to their liking. With the bulk of literature stored and accessed digitally, such a thing would be comparatively trivial.