The Amazon Kindle and Orwell’s 1984
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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© Alllie 2009
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