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Dr. Mr. Mccallon,

It's no coincidence that the two authors in America who have stood up to sound the alarm about the Hi-Tech corporate destruction of books and book culture, Sherman Alexie, a Native American, and myself, the child of a Holocaust survivor, are sons of genocided peoples.

Among writers, only Mr. Alexie and I have taken taken an uneqivocal stand against the book's extermination.

I cannot speak for Mr. Alexie but I have spent a lifetime on consideration of what constitutes the emergence of genocidal societies and have noted this predominant trend: even well in advance of the resort to criminal political machinations, and then escalating violence, emergent totalitarian systems with potentially genocidal agendas often first make war upon the sacred artifacts and monuments of the culture they seek to engulf. Following which, tyranny proceeds apace.

Today's Hi-Tech Taliban are mobilizing to decimate the economic base of print publishing, while at the same time destroying the validity of the book as sacred cultural artifact and finally, seeking, by any and all means, not only to gain control of our reading matter but to violate the act of reading itself, the very ways in which we read. All this sets my nerve ends a-tingle with warning signs of Holocaustalimplications.

Sincerely, Alan Kaufman
http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2010/jul/kaufman072409.html

P.S.
Enclosed is link to an article of mine, entitled "The Electronic Bookburning" that appears in the current issue of Evergreen Review (online, issue #120)
http://evergreenreview.com/120/electronic-book-burning.html

It paved the way to my follow-up article in the Huffington Post, "Google Books and Kindles: A Concentration Camp of Ideas".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-kaufman/google-books-and-kindles_b_38...

Mr. Kaufman:

A few points:

1) What is the culture "being engulfed" here? Are those nameless, volunteering thousands who have archived much of the best of literary civilization at sites like project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) working for the "Hi-Tech Taliban"? Both the production and protection of our cultural history is increasingly a project that virtually anyone can undertake; anyone can download all of the work on Project Gutenberg and store it in various formats. Surely, you can see that having hundreds of thousands of copies of these books stored throughout the world makes their existence far harder to eradicate than does the existence of physical libraries?

2) Why is your fetishization of "the book", in its paper-and-print form, more reasonable than the stance of someone protesting the replacement of Edison's wax cylinders in favor of vinyl records? Or vinyl records in favor of CDs? Or CDs in favor of mp3s/digital distribution? Why, indeed, aren't you arguing for a return to papyrus? I'm saying this as a person who still prefers books in printed (and sometimes audio) form. However, if a new generation grows up preferring to read books in digital form, carrying around their libraries wherever they go, where's the harm?

3) You have totally failed to address my chief argument against your rant, which is that the digitization of media does not make it easier to control, but rather renders it completely beyond the control of any government or corporation. In fact, Mr. Alexie's argument precisely invalidates yours: he is fearful of how easily "pirated" his book will be online; in effect, he fears how little control he and the publisher will have over it. You, meanwhile, seem to be simultaneously arguing that a) worshippers of "high tech", whatever that means, are trying deliberately to destroy the book publishing model (which you assume is the only viable model that can support creators, without actually justifying that assumption); and b) that corporations and bureaucrats will somehow "control"digitized books. Which our practical experience in the post-Napster area has proven to be totally impossible.

4) The main thing I take away from your many words on this subject is the fact that you are afraid of technology that you don't fully understand. I'm not saying that thorough study would alleviate all of your fears, but it would certainly help to quell many.

I don't think anyone would argue that there are no issues to navigate as media of all types increasingly becomes digital, but the concerns you raise are simply not getting to the heart of those issues. Consider the impossibility of removing something from the Internet--this fact has been demonstrated, time and again, to the chagrin of governments, celebrities, etcetera. Why do you somehow believe that this ineradicability doesn't apply to books?

Dear Nameless Visitor,
You ought to know, from the history of totalitarianism and genocide, that the fact of thousands or even of millions failing to object hardly constitutes an argument, that any symptoms of widespread apathy are the very result desired by totalitarianism.

Surely, then, in support of your view, it is not unreasonable to suggest, then, that one ought to be able to substantiate at least ten percent of ones claim. I will not even require that. You state with firm conviction that there are "thousands" of authors of genocided peoples who havent objected to electrification of the written word (to me, as you must know, it is, rather, the electrocution of the written word). Fine. Thousands is substantially more than one thousand. I won't even require a ten percent statistic based on that, which would amount to several hundred examples. Will you please provide for me a short list of the names of only 100 authors of genocided peoples who do not not object to the "electrification" of the written word (would prefer that the writing rather then the text were electrifying, but in this culture, that is asking too much). I don't mean authors whose books are e-booked because normally that has not been a matter of preference or even a notable discussion point ( but stipulated in the fine-print of the publisher contract and greeted by authors, most often, with an indifferent shrug (only now, with the ominous explosion of e-books, is it front page news). But rather, I mean authors (of genocided peoples) who have come out on the side of e-books as a benefit to their careers and to the future of books and book culture in general. Or, to show how reasonable I am, despite my alleged insanity (for putting forth the arguments that I have), will you please provide here a truncated list of just 50 such authors (of genocided peoples) who are comfortable with the transfer of our book culture into the cybersapce literary gulag.

Thank you.
Alan Kaufman

I have been following this conversation with interest.

As my father was a lover of books - not to be confused with written material read in digitalized form - and a voracious reader of such, I inherited both his love and reverence for the bound and printed word.

It is not simply a visual experience, it is a textural and olfactory journey that is deeply intimate and personal, and when lucky, taken with a volume that may have more years on this earth than the reader.

A book is a work of art; my father's home resonated with the life of these interactive works of art, both visually beautiful and alive on the walls, awakening and stimulating the intellect with but a glance.

Libraries, according to Benjamin Franklin, staunch upholder of true democratic ideals, were the very essence and basis of our freedom, for without free access to information there is no such thing as liberty, or freedom, which is in actuality the ability to make informed choices. Information is power. Control the flow of information and........

It is not only sad that Kindles has found such an enormous audience, it reflects a deeply disturbing trend in a world in which "progress" has done so much to harm so many people - on a purely practical level, reading from a digitalized screen will serve to impair the eyesight of millions at an age heretofore unheard of.

This is or may be a small matter, true, but the greater danger lies in compromising free access to information. While libraries will continue to exist, we will have conditioned our youth to regard them as ancient relics of a former age - akin to the writing of letters, something quaint but without merit in this age af rapidly expanding information technology. Libraries will fall into disuse and information will more and more be controlled and disseminated by huge, faceless corporate entities whose motives are questionable but whose increasing global power is not.

I am presenting to you a potential arena for the loss of individual liberty through the control and monopolization of our media and arts by international non-governmental agencies who, like parasites, have but one ultimate goal: self-preservation.

When self-preservation of the powerful is threatened, those without power are at risk. Technology and NGO's are today's Goliath. Those who dare speak against them -and are condemened with a such a degree of defensive, vitriolic scorn as to raise eybrows - are the 21st century David.

To not question the overwhelming impact of technology, its source and its ability to control the populace - because in truth we do not control it, it controls us -is to be astonishingly naive in a world where without technology WE CAN NO LONGER FUNCTION.

Whatever the reason Kindles/Amazon removed the George Orwell titles, the point is that they did and they were. One day "Animal Farm" is there and the next it is not...The reason is less germane than the fact that removal of the titles is and will remain up to the discretion of the Kindles/Amazon Board of Directors, whose only responsibility, as mentioned above, is self-preservation.

That self-preservation is a function of the political and religious views of the governing body is axiomatic.

At present there is no seemingly visible call to alarm save a few lone voices in the wilderness, decried as paranoid, senseless and ignorant of the ways of technology.

And yet the insidious process in which a parasite invades its host is by its very nature clandestine, quiet and unobtrusive. It adapts and reproduces. It exploits. It specializes - even modifying the behavior of the host.

Kindles technology is already changing the way people think about, and engage in, reading books. There is a loss in the sanctity of a a bound volume in the interest of convenient, hand-held devices, which at some point in the future may also double as camera, telephone and alarm clock. The reverence my father had for books will not be shared by future generations, who already spend more time focused on computer, video and TV screens than on reading and outdoor activities.

Just because something is convenient and progressive doesn't mean it's beneficial. Unless my house burns down, the books on my shelves are a permanent part of my life, will never disappear from my wall, cannot be removed by anyone, for any reason. Nor do they require a battery to operate.

The same is true of the library, as witnessed by Sarah Palin's recent attempt to have certain titles removed from the local library in her district. An instant and very public outcry stopped that train in its tracks. Thus printed material in the form of books, magazines, trade publications, pamphlets, and even flyers protect our access to information in ways which privatized, digitalized material cannot.

Private, computerized, digitalized book storage devices will be controlled and monitored by the companies that own them. They will be well within their rights to subject content as they wish. The problem is that future generations will be preconditioned to seek only that which is presented in computerized form, the prerogative of which will belong to the company in question. Who owns that company will be the determining factor in what the public reads.

Information is power. Control the information and you have the power.