Apocalypse now: WARNING Graphic Pictures of the mind: PAPER ON IT'S WAY OUT! THOSE OF US WHO HAVE PAPER BOOKS SHOULD KEEP THEM OR ALL KNOWLEDGE WILL BE LOST. We are an EM explosion away from ignorance. (A librarians Opinion) Local bookstores fall to 'e-book revolution' | StarTribune.com SEE POST BELOW.
PAPER on it's way out! Local bookstores fall to 'e-book revolution' | StarTribune.com http://t.co/7zh12yw Tweeting and Posting, I'm under the same name on Twitter.
THE NOOK KILLS THE BOOK,
I'm terrified, said the Librarian, but I could see the handwriting on the wall when I realized we were targeted for removal. I saw the first vestages in the 70's when people wanted to look at people without clothes rather than imagine... them, half dressed and suggestive. It was then I realized we were on a slippery slope. Soon there would be no more books... no more me.
We we have become a gross society, un used to the subliminal and the subjective of we no longer process information for ourselves. We indulge ourselves in being force fed the obvious, the gross and the mundane. This never was about the disappearance of paper books, this was always about the disappearance of our ability to see that which lies just beneath the surface. It is the reason the major networks now control our thoughts, our politics and our way of perceiving the world. George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and the other great minds have warned us over and over again protect your way of thinking. Unfortunately the younger generations cannot even perceive a world where there is no access to instantaneous electronic technology that gives them the ability to communicate only specific messages that their world allows. There was a time when people could write what they needed to and not look over their shoulder.
Two years ago during the Republican National Committee Convention here in St. Paul, Minnesota, something different happened, antiwar protesters were arrested for their comments and affiliations with people, we knew nothing about. For two years their lives were mysteriously hidden from us. In the end we found out they were communicating with people in Europe... but we don't know who. We are supposed to believe these were evil people... but we don't know at all what this really was about. We know what we were told, but the Patriot act makes the disappearance of people so quiet and hiddent that we don't know what was really going on. This singular act actually sent a chill throughout many of the intellectual community of the Midwest and those belonging to the Democratic Farmer Labor Party in Minnesota began to be very careful about what they wrote in any form of electronic media, which has greatly hampered their ability to communicate on any topic that they sense the US government would oppose. Whether that fear is real or subjective does not matter, a major inhibition has been placed before the democratically elected thinkers of the Minnesota Democratic Party. They are afraid to speak about the topic of the war because they sense the topic is now forbidden. For right or wrong the deed is done.
The problem with electronic media is that it is easily pliable, it can be quickly and easily changed once it is on the network. "The Times article, "Some e–books are more equal than others." This article shows that early on this was experimented with and indeed it worked as slick as you can imagine, in about a day they wiped out, George Orwell's, 1984's. On July 17 of 2009 the Times published an article explaining that the orwell books were unauthorized and Amazon removed them from their Kindle. That morning hundreds of kindle owners woke to find their copy missing from their reader. Of course Amazon credited their accounts, but that deed too was done. Amazon claimed the event was rare, but already it shows us how quickly what we have electronically can disappear. Just try to do that with a paper book, Amazon. Don't get me wrong. I love my e-reader, my nook, and Mike Kindle and my e-pub and my iBooks all serve keep me reading, vigorously. But I still rely very heavily on paper books because they include a way of seeing the world that does not exist outside of their boundaries and the thought that Amazon could slip into my Kindle overnight and take everything that is precious to me in their writings terrifies me or even worse what if they simply changed what is written. Now that is mind control. I saw this coming last month when I realized the book companies have finally come to terms with the process of e-publishing and sales. In November e-books outsold paper books for the first time.
The pliability of the E publishing does not mean that we could just have our books changed or altered in any way, but that they could disappear entirely electronic media is extremely unstable unlike the printed format, and it would take nothing more than a virus or glitch or a prank or hacker or electromagnetic explosion to wipe out great sums of knowledge. I went through this once before the card catalog we looked over the edge and we were terrified what would happen if it all disappeared and I still don't know if there is an answer to my questions of viability after we have been entirely integrated into an electronic megasystem based on the Library of Congress. I still am wondering what would happen if all my data suddenly went away. I suppose that would make me worth a lot more because at least I have memory of where the books are catalogued and how to find them, but if this were to happen in electronic format that all the un-catalogued books that are left over the world would be a much more difficult thing to find than simply going up to your librarian and asking them for little help. Where will they be, Unemployed? Where will their books be? Discarded? Sent to Africa? These events could change the entire worlds economy.
Indeed I think that libraries will cease to exist as we know them and it is very possible that accessibility to such great volumes of knowledge on our e-readers may make our life substantially better if we are indeed able to access grande volumes of knowledge like we currently believe.
Many people have paid very little attention to the net neutrality laws and how a few companies are weaving a web to control and constrict the flow of the information in and out of their portals so that those coroporate entities who don't care a wit for the United States of America, would become owners and Masters of the Ways and Means of facilitating information in a sense new librarians who will kick you out of the library at their hearts desire. Sen. Al Franken has fought these people tooth and nail for a modicum of net neutrality that would give you and I the freedom and accessibility to the information we will need to be information managers of our own lives throughout the 21st century, frankly the public's lack of concern over this issue and they're voting for powerful business interest in wanton ignorance of the Republican Party's servitude to those entities is setting them up to be minions of large conglomerates who will treat them as any child born in India. A life in a serfdom we have not experienced since the Middle Ages. America is confused about their relationship to big business and they don't understand that the owners of these companies are about to own them, mind, body and soul and for some, they already do it through Fox news and other so-called conservative media outlets. In the coming days they will do it to their children's minds through their textbooks and their constant revisions, without the public even knowing that the books have changed. Gone will be the committees that make a final choice on a textbook, the books will be constantly changing like online encyclopedias like World Book and Britannica are now. The world is changing and not all of those changes are to the benefit of the American People and their way of life.
"Come now let us see what fools these humans be," William Shakespeare said, through Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream, but perhaps our children will never know that phrase... as it will simply be edited on-the-fly and removed from the history of their lives.
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