Amazon's deleting the book 1984 (and Animal Farm) from Kindle users continues to make waves.
On Salon, digital book advocate has an essay pointing out that the technology used by Amazon to delete George Orwell's novels also allows governments or courts to totally ban books, once we have eliminated paper copies. It's certainly an Orwellian thought.
I love the new technology. I spend hours a day on one of the three computers I use at least once a day (a regular PC at home and at the office and a Mac PowerBook). I get an average of more than a hundred e-mails a day from a vast array of sources. I regularly run though my list of more than 50 bookmarked sites (at least once every other day). I check my Facebook and Twitter pages every day. I am envious of how the new technology adds to the abilities of reporters to do their jobs.
But I still fear technology -- or at least how it can be misused by, often well-meaning, computer programmers and site developers. As I scroll over an online newspaper or magazine page, trying to read the text, only to be constantly stopped when Flash attachments show me a photo of the author or tell me that India has approximately 1.17 billion people or Volvo was rated the safest car by someone or other, I wonder again about this tendency that if something is possible, we should do it. If I were tsar of Amazon, I'd root out that ability to delete things from Kindle, even though it's too late and even if Amazon said it had, many of us (me included) wouldn't believe it couldn't be restored by typing in a line of code. Just as my iPod frustrates me daily by the fact that all of its functions are in one bar (how many times must I find myself changing tracks or artists while trying to adjust the sound?), computers bring such awesome tools to the game that the potential for harm may, at some point, outweigh the good.
That's one reason why I still read books on paper, and intend to continue to do so.
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