The Amazon Kindle and Orwell’s 1984

Posted on September 20, 2011 by alllie

Will the Amazon Kindle save publishing? Do you want one? Should you want one? I’ve been considering that question myself.

There are pros and cons. The pros: The Kindle seems to be very neat. It’s small, small enough to carry in a purse. Amazon claims you can drop it without it breaking. You can adjust the font and, for those of us whose eyesight is failing, that’s very important. And it can read to you. Amazon claims it can read to you better than other programs, almost as well as a person.

Then there are the cons.

First, using the Kindle, instead of a paper book, changes books from something permanent, something you can keep your entire life, to something ephemeral. I have books over a hundred years old but I have lost computer files on the day I saved them. I have lost programs. I have lost pictures. I’ve had a hacker get into my computer and delete files. If I go to electronic books I can guarantee that I will lose some. If it’s a book I love, or even like, that is something horrible to contemplate.

Then there is the format thing. I have a thousand records and no way to play them. As albums changed from records to CDs the change in format made records, well, little more than nostalgic talismans. As years pass there will be format changes in electronic books and some books in an older format will be lost. There are books thousands of years old that can still be read but when a format falls out of favor, will it take a new Rosetta Stone to decipher books in an old format? Or will they be lost forever?

Amazon claims you will be able to replace everything you buy from them at any time. Do they really expect to be around a hundred years, their files uncorrupted and their records of your purchases still preserved? No, that is too much to ask. If you buy a Kindle eventually you will lose some of your books. The law may even change so you have to pay to keep rereading them. Certainly the format would make that possible.

Even worse, changing books to an electronic format, some of them stored on Amazon, would allow these books to be easily modified to reflect the lies of new administrations, of new rulers. In Orwell’s 1984 books were continually changed to reflect the changing propaganda of a repressive government. I never understood how they did that. How could they collect every affected book and replace it with a slightly different book? With electronic books that would become all too easy. Already on the Internet I’ve seen articles change, seen articles, even in major publications, that disappeared. Certainly electronic books would make book burnings unnecessary. Books would just be put on a restricted list and, the next time you logged into Amazon, that book would disappear from your Kindle. Or maybe just be replaced by a “corrected version.”

Publishing all books and magazines and newspapers in the Kindle format would be a dream come true for any repressive regime.

So, what to do, what to do?

Not that the decision of any one reader will make a difference. It is the decisions of millions of readers that will seal the fate of books. So maybe I can ignore the dangers and get a Kindle for my own convenience and screw the world.

And it sounds so convenient.

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To comment email alllie at alllie@newsgarden.org

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The Return of Radio

Posted on September 19, 2011 by alllie

I’m not quite old enough to remember radio back when it held stories, news, and live music, when it was TV without pictures. I mostly remember how radio turned me on to rock and roll, from the Beatles to NIN. Most of that is over. Now radio has little new music and is mostly oldies, rightie talk and religious rants.

Religious radio is right wing political propaganda. Tax-free rightie propaganda. The preachers even encourage listeners to call Congress and give the H. R. numbers of bills they tell their listeners to say they support or oppose. Would that the left could afford that kind of propaganda.

Locally we had Air America Radio for a while but they took that off despite this being a city that votes about 90% Democratic. Radio isn’t about listeners, it’s about who buys ads and even if Memphis is heavily Democratic the businesses who buy ads aren’t. So we lost Air America.

We used to have the talk part of NPR. Now that has been replaced with content-free classical music… YAWN. There is nothing for a leftie like me to listen to. Or even for a moderate. I think it’s all a plot.

Anyway, I used to listen to radio while I cooked or cleaned or ate a meal. Now unless I’m cleaning the room where my computer room lives so I can stream Air America, I can’t be doing anything and still listen to radio.

I’ve always been a big reader, a book freak. I planned to be reading on my deathbed but that no longer seems possible. As I get older I am losing my vision and the book I used to be able to read in a day now takes me a month. It frustrates the hell out of me. I have been trying to find substitutes.

First I started listening to the local library channel, WYPL. They read the local paper in the morning and books in the afternoon. The main problem with that is having no control. If I am not interested in the book or article they are reading, I can’t go on to something else. If I am interested but have to do something else, then I miss it and can’t go back and listen to the part I missed.

The local library has some books on CD but either I’ve read them or I am not interested in reading (listening) to them. The local library seems mostly aimed at children or people of limited education.

Then I discovered podcasting. I got the cheapest mp3 player I could get on Amazon. It was $27 but has now gone up to $44!! (Due to the falling dollar?) It’s fine. Well, except for the ear buds that wouldn’t stay in my ears but I had old headphones I used instead. I am finding more and more things to listen to on podcast, shows that mimic the old radio shows I’ve heard about.

Aside from books in general I am a big fan of science fiction. This began in high school when the table where I used to sit in the library had a bookcase of science fiction behind it, mostly anthologies of short stories . If my homework was done or I wanted to put it off, I would turn around and pick up a random book and start reading. This got me started with scifi and, while other genres have lost their interest over the years, it never has.

My fading vision locked me out of the scifi worlds. With my mp3 player I found a new door into them. There is a website called escapepod.org. It has over a hundred hours of scifi short stories that you can listen to online or download. They are not read the bland way they are on WYPL. They are like old radio shows with people of talent doing the reading. I am hungry for the printed word and these stories satisfy that hunger.

So here’s to Steve Ely’s Escape Pod!! Long may she stream!!

I especially want to recommend the story Connie, Maybe. If you are southern you know people like this and if you are starting to get old you are people like this. Very funny and well read/performed.

I also recommended the podcasts at:
The Naked Scientist
Nature
Science Magazine

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To comment email alllie at alllie@newsgarden.org

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The National Conference for Media Reform

Posted on September 19, 2011 by alllie

Last weekend [in 2007] I went to the National Conference for Media Reform organized by Free Press and supported by MoveOn. It was inspiring. There were 3200 people attending, most of whom had dedicated a large part of their lives trying to make the world a better place.

And it was SO diverse. Normally diversity only means that in a group of white people there might be a black person or in a group of black people there might be a white or hispanic person. The conference showed how racist, sexist, ageist, and lookist our normal diversity is. There were all kinds of people there. Not just black and white and hispanic and asian but young to very old, skinny to very fat, beautiful to ugly. No one was excluded or even sidelined based on superficial criteria. Everyone was included in. For every college kid or young professional there was a grey-haired or white-haired oldster. For every beautiful person there was someone.. beautiful in a different way. For every trim, short-haired, carefully-groomed individual there was an aging hippie with a pony tail or braids. And all these people, or almost all, were working to make things better. Even the rich people were giving their time and money to help make the world better. It all started to seem Utopian. Then it started to seem how the world would be if the peace, love, harmony and understanding of the 60s had been not been lost. It was like Woodstock, realized. Woodstock with brains.

I am a pessimist and this gathering made me feel optimistic, made me feel we had a chance to stop the evil ones from sweeping over the world like a tidal wave of garbage. These were the good people. So good people exit in greater numbers than I knew. Maybe 3200 people out of 300 million isn’t much but for everyone at the conference surely there are another 100 or 1000 good people who weren’t there. Good people working to save the nation and the world.

There were booths for many of the websites I visit every day putting faces to some of the best sites on the web.

Common Dreams

Fair
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Consumers Union

In These Times

Stop Fake News

The busiest seemed to be the Alliance for 911 Truth booth.

People brought their laptops to the sessions and wrote blogs or browsed as they listened.

There was a protest against a bill to force handicapped people into nursing homes instead of funding home care (which would be cheaper but not as profitable for the Frists.)